


[READ MORE]

by voidwaren



Series: Warren is Strange [3]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Explicit Language, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recreational Drug Use, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:53:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23292007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidwaren/pseuds/voidwaren
Summary: A compilation of ficlets from the W/S AU universe, because I really don’t know how to just let things go.Tags, characters, and such will be added as each story is added, because I have no idea what's in store. Warnings subject to change.Welcome back, my dudes.
Relationships: Dana Ward/Trevor Yard, Maxine "Max" Caulfield & Warren Graham, Maxine "Max" Caulfield/Chloe Price, Warren Graham & Chloe Price, Warren Graham & Hayden Jones, Warren Graham & Trevor Yard, Warren Graham/Nathan Prescott
Series: Warren is Strange [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/963051
Comments: 48
Kudos: 105





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **NOTE:** This’ll permanently say it’s finished due to the fact I don’t know how many fics will go into it, but chances are it’s not actually finished. I don’t know if it’ll ever be truly _finished._ Just keep a bit of an eye on it, or my Tumblr (voidwaren), if you're ever curious what's coming up. Also: these fics are not in chronological order. They just kind of happen whenever they happen. Aside from all that, well...
> 
> I have nothing to say for myself.

It was the final hour. The stage had been set, the battle raged, and they were down to the final few seconds that would change it all. It was a journey taken to this single point. A ballad waiting for its closing verse.

The moment is now.

And with the world crumbling around her, the beautiful queen has one decision left. She turns to the disgraced Marvel and, her head held high, has one last choice to make. Save the world, or lay ruin to all around her? It’s the final blow, the end to Armageddon, the killing truth to the fatal mystery of Marvel’s entire existence. It’s now Captain Bluestar’s move. All of the cards are in her favor, and Marvel’s entire fate rests in her rival’s hands.

Bluestar smiles down at her foe, smearing the blood from her face like a warrior queen, and says, “I roll to kiss her.”

The ground shudders, the air springs to life with hell’s flames, and the sun is suddenly lost to the miasma that churns from the underdepths of the world below. The last command has been spoken, and the almighty victor has chosen the final move on her fallen nemesis to be— Wait a minute.

What?

Warren blinks up over his screen, immersion lost, and finds Chloe blinding him with a shit-eating grin.

“What?” he repeats.

“I roll to kiss her,” she says again, firmly, that grin only widening until it was nearly predatory. “Or, seduce her, I guess is the word I want. Whatever you dweebs like to call it.”

Nathan throws his hands up. Warren has to lunge to keep his screen from crumpling down when the tips of Nathan’s fingers clip a heavily-laden corner. He was sitting too close again, dammit.

“Jesus, Price,” Nathan spits with the motion, full acid, “can you not be a dyke for five godforsaken minutes?”

“Back at’cha, faggy,” Chloe returns, her bite just as potent behind those glinting teeth.

“Language!” Warren cries.

“Yeah,” Nathan adds waspishly, looming in Chloe’s direction, “watch your fucking slurs, Price.”

Warren sighs, smacking Nathan lightly on the arm with the fan of his folded-up stats cheat sheet. _“Nathan,”_ is all he says, because he knows Nathan knows what he’s done without having to be told. “Alright,” he continues tiredly, Nathan having learned nothing and Chloe’s clear triumph over her unaccounted-for twist leaving Warren at their combined mercy. “Roll and we’ll see where we’re going from there.”

“She’s going to get a good roll,” Max mutters from behind her smirk, and she’s not wrong. Chloe apparently has a knack for dice-rolling, because she’d been hitting all the right numbers the entire night, and it was almost to the point that, if she weren’t using _Warren’s_ spare dice—the same dice she was sharing with Nathan and Max, because they didn’t have their own and Warren only had so many to spare before he ordered a pound of them for the real game—Warren would think she was cheating. And it wasn’t the dice, either, because Max had rolled a two with the same damn die a few minutes before Chloe had taken out Captain Marvel, and _her_ character was currently falling indefinitely down a chasm she’d tripped into spectacularly.

Chloe snatches up a twenty-sided die and bounces it with gusto off of Warren’s poor repurposed coffee table, and they all watch as it skitters across to Nathan’s side before taking a nearly-dramatic careen right up to the edge.

“Well?” Chloe asks once it’s come to a halt, apparently unwilling to lean the short distance into Nathan’s space to see what she rolled.

Nathan and Warren share a glance, and then they both drop their heads to read the result.

‘Lo and behold, it’s a fucking Nat20. Because what else would it be?

“Sauron damn it all,” Warren whispers, then drops back into his dramatic storytelling voice as Chloe whoops her glee. Well, might as well round it off on a high note, right? “As it turns out, getting the shit kicked out of her by a warrior pirate queen is one of Captain Marvel’s big turn-ons, and she swoons on the spot when you stand over her and prepare to become her destruction. You take notice of her swooning and decide you don’t want to rid the world of her mind-controlled plans to vanquish the world of do-good individuals by literally exploding the planet with her epic superpowers, despite turning Thor into a goat and roasting him for dinner the night before because he mentioned possibly feeling a little dizzy and randomly insidious—no, you’d rather _tap that.”_

Chloe laughs, smacking her hand on the table. “Damn right! She _fine!”_

“You reach down and help Marvel to her feet, and she winds her arms around you to keep from falling back to the ground, even though she’s basically invincible and her legs are working just fine now that you didn’t take your chance to smite her and she’s starting to recover thanks to her superpowers. You look into her eyes, tilt her back, and smooch her a good one. It’s such a fantastic smooch that she proposes to you on the spot. Your companion’s screaming can be heard faintly in the distance, since she’s still falling, and the air smells of charred flesh, since your other companion was shish-ka-bob’d and roasted alive like five minutes ago. By the lady proposing to you. It’s very romantic.”

Chloe claps her hands together dramatically. “I accept, obviously!”

“You accept, and together you walk into the burning sunset, because the world’s still technically on fire, but that’s okay. You got the girl. You technically saved the world from her wrath. The wedding will be in spring, if anyone’s still alive to attend.” Warren sighs and drops his face into his hands. “End campaign.”

* * *

They go to the diner for some victory waffles after, and Warren tries his best not to sulk into his food the entire time. Chloe laminates how surprisingly fun something as nerdy as a roleplaying board game can be, and Max says something that very distinctly edges around getting her into World of Warcraft. Warren doesn’t have time to get excited about that, though, before Nathan’s scoffing and saying he would love it if she ended up taking up something that would turn her into a recluse that locks herself in the house all day, because that means he would never have to see her again, and Chloe snipes back with the beginnings of their usual verbal altercations.

Max gives Warren her usual eye roll, and Warren replies back with his usual headshake, and together they listen to their respective partners duke it out with the same surface wounds they always inflict on each other when they have to remind themselves they are most certainly, absolutely, in no way even possibly, _friends_.

Despite the unprecedented ending to a campaign that not only took Warren months to plan, but also was one he considered to be one of his more genius moves, turning the good guys bad only at the crux of the campaign after they had all fallen for Marvel’s charms and considered her a close companion, Warren couldn’t help but admit he had fun. Both during the entire game, and at the after-party that consisted only of them four (Kate had other obligations, and Warren didn’t _really_ need her when he was just testing it out) and mostly had Chloe and Nathan gleefully exchanging barbed commentary that only made them seem more like siblings than enemies. He absolutely wants to do it again.

He just—has to figure out how to keep Chloe from yanking the wheel out of his hands and going on a joyride with his storyline. Which, with Chloe, like almost everything concerning her, was so much easier said than actually done.

“Now I have to make it better,” Warren grumbles, not for the first time, as he climbs into bed that night, nudging Nathan until he’s stopped hogging most of the dorm-sized bed. “How the hell am I going to top Captain Marvel?”

Nathan snorts, dropping his phone, which he’d just been tapping away at, on his chest. “You? Don’t.” Warren turns his head and frowns, and Nathan raises his eyebrows. “You scream _bottom_ , and not just because Captain Marvel could top anyone she wanted to.”

Warren’s face immediately flares up red hot, and he makes an indignant noise that would do a valley girl proud. “I am not!” he protests, maybe slightly too vehemently. He can’t say he’s never thought about it, but he didn’t like Nathan _assuming_ shit like that. He could have the decency to ask, even if Warren probably wouldn’t answer. “Shut _up_ Nathan, we’re not having— We’re not discussing where I might— _Stop_ , oh my god!” he demands, voice high, when Nathan leans over and leers at him.

Nathan cackles, overjoyed with the reaction he got, and Warren pelts him with a pillow. He only grunts once before resuming the cackle, taking the pillow and cramming it under his head.

Warren snags a hand into his hair, throwing his head onto the pillow corner dramatically, because he’d just sequestered his own pillow to the cause, and Nathan wasn’t one to give back what Warren had willingly sacrificed. Nathan smacks him with a comic book pulled from God knows where in retaliation for disrupting his position next to him, but he doesn’t push Warren’s head away.

“I can’t have my campaign coming to ruins because Chloe’s rolling preternaturally good numbers and wooing my big reveals into immediate submission. It’s anticlimactic! I have plans!”

“So just make the final boss a guy,” Nathan says as he flips open the comic book and starts to read.

Warren frowns. He can’t see Nathan’s face from the way he’s positioned himself even if he cranes his head, so he only tries once before giving the endeavour up. “Is Chloe not into guys, like, at all?”

“I don’t know, and I have never cared less about something in my entire life,” Nathan replies, deadpan.

“That’s a lie.”

Nathan only smacks him with the comic again, sending Warren into a fit of cackles at knowing he was right, and the problem of his campaign is lost to the night as the comic slips to the side and off of the bed, and Warren’s attention is firmly caught elsewhere for all the time it takes for him to pass out for the night as Nathan takes his face in his hands and conjures up the perfect distraction.

* * *

Nathan’s not there when Warren wakes up the next morning, so Warren decides the day is his to do with as he pleases. Unfortunately for him, the only thing he wants to do is figure out how the hell to keep Chloe and her weirdly good luck from demolishing an epic finish that will take his name down the line in history as one of the best damn games they’ve ever played.

(Okay, _only_ damn game they’ve ever played, in the case of almost every other person showing up for this shindig. But maybe it could also be the best!)

He doesn’t get very far, and, a few hours into his attempts at wracking his brain and scrounging around YouTube and Reddit for tips, he promptly throws his notebook at the wall and falls dramatically onto the floor. And then he stays there for a little while, because, right now, he just feels like being a dramatic teenager, and he was way overdue for his opportunities to be one. Saving his home from a time god and her mistakes didn’t exactly offer ample chances for such things.

He eventually goes looking for Nathan, mostly to get his mind off the thing that’s frustrating him via bothering Nathan more than any other possible reason, and eventually locates him hanging out on the academy greens by a tree with Victoria, Courtney, Taylor, and Hayden.

Hayden spots him first, almost before Warren spots them, and he hollers his greeting and waves Warren over with both arms thrown in wide arcs like the large hazard he had the nature to be. He’s grinning with all his teeth, and Warren doesn’t miss the way he turns that grin on Nathan when Nathan’s head pops out from behind the obscuring shadow of the tree to see what Hayden’s making a fuss over.

“Hey, hey,” Hayden calls. “If it isn’t our special weather boy, in the flesh!”

“Hey, Hayden,” Warren greets when Hayden lopes up to meet Warren, something curled between the spaces of three of his fingers—joints, Warren can see when Hayden gets close enough. He accepts the one-arm hug Hayden offers him, then asks as he’s led over to the group, “Weather boy?”

“Nate was telling us about how good you are at knowing about weird weather shit.”

“Bragging,” Taylor corrects, and Nathan throws her one of his patented Prescott looks.

“It’s a niche skill,” Warren replies with a shrug as he tries not to zero in on that little tidbit of information. He already knew he was a topic of conversation between Nathan and his pose when he wasn’t around, but the flip from what he knew to have been mean commentary before his time loops to what seemed now to be simple praise—from Nathan himself—was kind of hard to just ignore. He completely misses whatever Courtney says because of his failure to ignore, but Nathan’s switching his glare onto her, so it must not have been nice.

“Or not,” she mutters drily, rolling her eyes.

“What?” Warren says, bringing all of the attention back onto him.

“You’re probably too busy helping all the other idiots of the school,” Taylor says, efficiently bringing no ounce of comprehension to Warren’s previous confusion, then reaches out for one of the joints, which are now lit. She takes a long drag, then passes it to Courtney. Warren waves away the one Hayden offers him, the smell of pot just a sharp reminder of all those nights he’d spent with Nathan just trying to figure out how to get out of everything alive. “Anyway,” Taylor continues after blowing the smoke out in a long, thin stream. “I have to finish that project, so I’m outtie.”

“Guess that’s it for me too, then,” Courtney agrees, slipping her phone into her pocket and giving Nathan what’s left of her joint. Both she and Taylor look to Victoria like they’re expecting something, and Victoria just rolls her eyes.

“What? I already did the starting argument. I’ll wrap it up. I am _not_ carrying the whole project.”

Taylor and Courtney exchange glum looks, then give their goodbyes and trail away from the gathering. Warren watches them go.

“You’re not going to go with them?” asks Hayden from where he’s leaning against the tree Nathan is sprawled against. Nathan’s fingers play with the cuff of Warren’s pants idly, but his attention is up on Hayden.

“Why would I?” Victoria offers haughtily. “If I go, I’ll just end up carrying the whole thing. Sometimes I don't want to be the leader, alright?”

Hayden only shakes his head, smiling. Wholly unperturbed by Victoria's venom.

“You two,” Victoria continues, flipping her hand in their general direction. Warren doesn’t understand which two of them she’s referring to until she continues with, “Take your skunk weed over there. I’m getting a headache and you’re not helping.”

“As you wish, your majesty,” says Hayden, his free hand reaching down to level with Nathan’s head and holding there until Nathan takes it and hauls himself to his feet. “Come on, Nate. Let’s knock these back by the fountain.”

Nathan, already subdued by the hit he’s taken, only grumbles something in response before he leans Warren’s way and touches his cold nose against the hollow below Warren’s ear in the mockery of a kiss. It would be a weird gesture if it wasn’t Nathan. Warren answers back with a hand brushing along Nathan’s back, and then Nathan and Hayden meander off to the fountain to finish their joints.

Victoria doesn’t say a thing until they’re seated on the side of the structure, and Warren doesn’t dare say anything himself. Then, she sighs and says, idly, “I swear, something about you is like giving everyone a straight shot of Benadryl. Sometimes shit is just—such a mess, and then you show up and it’s like we were never two steps from an atrocity before you got there.”

Warren hesitates, just a single heartbeat, and then he raises his index finger and says, “I believe the term you’re looking for is _clusterfuck_.”

Victoria snorts, and it’s possibly the first time she’s ever come close to laughing at something Warren’s said without also laughing at Warren himself. He tries to quell the excitement this realization flares to life in his chest, but he must take it too far, because Victoria raises an eyebrow at him in judgement despite the fact he thought he hadn’t moved. He slumps against the tree and tries to calm himself again, turning his attention onto Nathan and Hayden in the distance so he doesn’t start staring at Victoria. They’re having some kind of conversation, a debate, maybe, if Nathan’s expressions are anything to go by, and Warren watches them for so long that he almost completely forgets Victoria is even there. At least until she speaks again.

“He hasn’t always been like this,” a voice says so gently that Warren doesn’t immediately recognize who it is talking to him, despite no one having joined the group. It pulls his attention away from Nathan and Hayden almost whiplash fast. Victoria rolls her eyes at him when he looks at her like he wasn’t sure she had just spoken to him in a tone that was anything short of scathing. “Don’t get used to it,” she warns.

“I didn’t—“ he starts, but she raises her hand and brushes him away. He presses his lips together and watches as her gaze strays back to Nathan and Hayden, where she’d obviously been looking before. Warren can hear them talking about something heated as their voices rise in volume, carrying across the greens with Nathan’s hands gesturing wildly as the tokes he’d taken continue to kick in, but he can’t hear enough to figure out the exact subject.

“He’s a lot better now,” Victoria starts again, and Warren forces himself to keep his eyes on the guys. “He’s always been a little— _you know_.” Warren does, but he doesn’t say anything, and she continues as if she had never expected Warren to answer anyway. “But he’s—shit, even better than he was. For a while there, though—“ She barks a short laugh, and Warren swears he can hear a layer of nervousness somewhere in it. Its presence is confirmed when, after a moment, Victoria whispers in a voice low enough to have been just for her, “For a minute there, I was almost afraid of what was happening to him.”

Warren knows what she means, and he suddenly hates how little attention he’d paid to her back when everything was falling apart around him. Sure, she wasn’t really a movable pawn in the end—Nathan demanding Warren save her before Jefferson did anything was a tentative variable, because, in the end, he’d been thwarted before he could do more than kick the shit out of both Nathan and Max—but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been witnessing Nathan fall to pieces when no one else bothered to give a damn.

She knew Nathan more than anyone else at the school. It was something Warren almost resented about her despite himself. She had earned what she had with Nathan, had been with Nathan through things Warren hadn’t known existed before he took the chance to know who Nathan actually was and not just what everyone else wanted him to be. She deserved Nathan and all he was—Warren was still in the process of earning the same.

Warren dares a glance at Victoria then, but she’s not looking at him. She’s watching Nathan with an expression he hadn’t known she was capable of making. She’s looking at Nathan like she’d almost lost him, and Warren has to stop the sudden, almost aching need to tell her she almost had. To confirm that her fears were not for nothing, and that she almost had lost someone she cared for because she hadn’t feared enough.

He doesn’t know where the cruel urge comes from, and he squashes it so fast he almost gasps with the panic of it existing in the first place. He was not that kind of person, and he never wanted to _be_ that kind of person. Victoria looks at him again, the expression gone.

“So, I guess...” she starts quietly, and then hesitates. When she starts again, all the hardness she wore just before is gone. “Thank you for helping him.”

Warren blinks at her, unable to keep himself from at least slightly gaping, and then, like the idiot he had the habit of being at the worst of times, opens his mouth and blurts out, “Do you want to join our game?”

Her eyes sharpen immediately, the look that asked him why he was bothering to breathe in her presence springing right back onto her face like a perfectly-fitted mask. “I don’t even want to know what you mean by that,” she quips cooly. “Absolutely not.”

Warren deflates, but something in him uncoils at the same time, a release of tension Victoria’s honesty had curled up in him. He doesn’t bother thinking too hard about that one.

* * *

Warren doesn’t tell Nathan about his interaction with Victoria. He knows if she wants Nathan to know, she’ll tell him herself, and Warren doesn’t think he has the right to tread on that territory when it wasn’t his vulnerability at stake. They return to Nathan’s room after Nathan’s had his fill of weed and Hayden, and Hayden makes them both promise to hang out later, because he felt like he was missing out on all the cool things Nathan and Warren got up to.

“What does he think we do?” Warren asks Nathan once they’re securely in Nathan’s room, Warren locking the door behind them while Nathan taps away on his phone with their Chinese food order for the night.

“How should I know?” Nathan replies without looking up. “Vic’s under the impression we just get handsy and shit when we lock ourselves up. I thought that’s what they all thought.”

Warren’s gaze on Nathan turns startled. “Did Hayden just proposition us for a threesome?” he chokes, horrified.

That brings out a guffaw of bright laughter from Nathan, and he nearly drops his phone when he doubles over with the weight of it. “No, you sick fuck,” Nathan barks, still laughing. “Hayden’s a player, but he doesn’t play that end of the field. You’re safe from him, idiot.”

Warren glowers in Nathan’s direction, then resolutely ignores him and goes to set up the projector for whatever they were going to watch that night. Nathan finishes out his amusement and actually orders their food, then joins Warren on the floor while Warren sorts through Nathan’s many movie options.

A comfortable silence falls between them as Warren surveys and narrows down the choices before him and Nathan digs around one of the boxes of comics Warren loaned him to keep on hand so he wouldn’t have to keep breaking into Warren’s room for them when he got bored.

It lasts only long enough for Warren to feel safe in his moment, and then is broken as Nathan inhales sharply and Warren startles with his whole body in response. He jumps up from where he’d sprawled out on his stomach to find Nathan on his knees over the box and clutching a comic book in his hands. All the wind rushes out of Warren as he slumps back down again, the panic abruptly gone with the lack of a threat at hand. Nathan either doesn’t notice Warren’s previous alarm or doesn’t realize the weight of it, because he’s sitting up straight and immediately vying for Warren’s attention.

 _“This one,”_ Nathan hisses, but he’s grinning with all his teeth and looks so excited that Warren can’t stop looking at him even after having the comic shoved right up under his nose. “Warren!” Nathan insists, his expression dropping a little into annoyance, and Warren blinks and finally takes the comic from him.

“Oh,” Warren says faintly when a colored profile featuring a head composed of more machine than man greets him. “Holy shit. Yeah.” Warren lifts his gaze up, and Nathan looks like he’s vibrating on the spot. “ _Yeah_. That could work.”

Nathan gives him an honest grin, one that Warren wishes desperately, in that moment, that he had some semblance of a photography skill to capture. He had so few things of Nathan’s to cherish, and the ones he wanted most he couldn’t hold.

He watches Nathan smiling long enough for Nathan to catch on and abruptly drop the expression and demand the comic back before Warren could fuck up the chance to do it right. Warren only laughs to hide his disappointment and gives it back, and then, together, with the food arrived and an old favorite playing in the background, they start planning Version 2.0 of Warren’s Epic D&D Night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> those of you who follow me on Tumblr might remember this one. it's basically the same, I've just wrapped it up from where it was WIP'd.
> 
> warnings for Warren's mental instability, as this is a look into how Warren still has to cope with the aftereffects of something he cannot seek help for.

It had been one of his bad days.

Not one of the days where he’d wake up and have to stare at the ceiling of his darkened dorm room for at least forty-five minutes in order to remind himself of where he was and when he was, because he’d wake up back in time-loop mode and immediately have Nathan at his side to snap him back to himself, to let him realize and reboot.

No, those were his good days. This? This had been one of the _bad_ days.

One of the days where he’d wake up screaming or somewhere close to it, with his heart racing and his shirt clutched between his hands, breathing labored and mind racing with all the unsolved mysteries he never managed to puzzle out. Scrambling to bring together a haphazard plan of some kind, to steel itself for what it thought was to come, to handle the next repeat of everything he had started to think was all he’d ever know again when time wouldn’t stop flipping over on itself and taking Warren with it.

One of the days—when he would wake up as someone else. As the person he’d needed to be back then, as the person he sometimes couldn’t stop being. When he would forget, just for that time, who he was allowed to be now.

It was hard living in a reality where things were normal after spending so much time when nothing was. Sometimes Warren just couldn’t pull back. And this had been one of those times.

He’d tried keeping a calendar within view of his bed the first few times it had happened, on the days so far past the end that Nathan had started getting up before the sun rose so he could make the perfect portfolio and Warren would be left to wake up to his own devices—Nathan unaware of what happened to Warren when he wasn’t there to stop the episodes before they began, because Warren had never had the guts to tell him when he seemed so much happier with how things were going, and it’s not like it happened _all_ the time—but it had never worked. Warren couldn’t see the calendar; didn’t register its presence in the fog of his waking panic, couldn’t see the date at the top or take the comfort it had been intended to offer him, to keep him from what he always ended up becoming those mornings.

Even when it was right in front of his face, he couldn’t see it. Even when he had stapled it to every wall he could possibly face upon waking up and claimed it to be a psychological experiment when Nathan had questioned his sanity—

He. Couldn’t. _See_. It.

It bothered Warren when Nathan had believed him with little more than a patented scoff of relative disgust at what he’d thought to just be another of Warren’s nerdy antics, because it showed how much Nathan trusted Warren’s word—and how far Warren had come from the guy he’d been back when he thought lying never made any ends meet.

But it bothered him more knowing the guilt Nathan would put on himself if he knew, and the obligation he would feel. Because Nathan wasn’t the guy he’d been before either, and Warren wasn’t exactly sure this was one of the times it was for the better. Not when Warren acted like _this_.

Nathan had found out eventually. Warren could only keep himself in the dark for so long—it was just the kind of person he was, at the end of everything. But he’d kept it in the dark for as long as he could, terrified of what could come of it once it all came out.

It had been one of his bad days— _this_ bad day—that would ruin it all.

Because he had woken up with a start this day, a scream lodged in his throat and the front of his shirt soaked through with a cold sweat, clamped tightly in the fingers of his right hand, his eyes all but blind to the calendar in front of him that read his truth.

His mind was an incoherent howl of panic—a scramble of words and instances and memories he had thought he’d needed to keep in order to break the cycle, but had ended up meaning nothing at all. A buzz of raw emotion encompassing an inability to pick a thread of coherence out of the churning mass of mental instability Warren always was, always right in that blinding moment. Usually, Warren stayed where he was in bed, his mind too caught up in the frantic thoughts and the paralyzing dread to move at all, but something about this time had been different. Something about this time had spurred Warren on, and this time Warren had decided to move.

This time, Warren had stumbled out of bed, noticed the calendar he’d kept in the same space for all his career at Blackwell Academy, and stopped dead in his tracks.

The month. It was the month that set him back, and he stared at it in a moment of loss even as his mind tried to reject what he was seeing. Because he wasn’t himself, and the other didn’t understand the now.

The month was wrong.

How was this possible? Had he been sent forward this time?

For what reason?

What about the storm?

No…

No, wait.

 _You fixed everything_ , his mind reminded him suddenly, violently, from somewhere behind the black wall of chaos. _You saved everyone._

And then it clicked. Like Nathan’s presence once did, everything slotted into place. But instead of the relief it usually brought, either in the form of Nathan’s body next to his or the slow descent from madness lying around gave, it hit Warren like a wrecking ball, and he knew in that moment, like nothing else, that he was careening head-first into a mental breakdown.

It wasn’t the first time he’d had a breakdown—not even close—but it was the first time it had come on so suddenly that Warren found himself scrambling out of his room and stumbling down the hall, tears pulling at the corners of his eyes and a sob crawling its way up his throat, his path so clear-cut that nothing else mattered to him right at that moment. He passed Dana just as she was emerging from Trevor’s room, but he didn’t hear what she said to him as he raced to the showers and threw the water on in one of them, wrenching the curtain shut behind him so hard that he was nearly certain he’d ripped it. He’d heard Dana call still, so close she must have followed him in, but he was too busy breathing to tell her he was fine and she could leave. He wanted her to leave—didn’t want her to see him like this when he had no way of explaining what has caused his state—but he couldn’t get enough air to _think_.

The water was hot, scorching him down to the bone even with the shield his clothes offered, because he hadn’t had the reasoning within him to take them off. He didn’t want to turn it down. He didn’t want to move.

He couldn’t.

He could only breathe.

At some point Dana stopped calling his name, at some point she left him to his own devices, he thought—

No, no, he thinks, he _thinks_ —because now everything is happening, because everything is happening now, because he is back and he is now and he knows where he is and who he is and what he’s done and—

But he isn’t sure when that happened or how long she had been gone by the time he’s realized. By the time he’s pulled back to himself. By the time he’s _now_.

All he can do is breathe.

_Breathe._

Warren gasps through the onslaught the shower offers, taking in air he couldn’t seem to keep, and presses the palms of his hands against his eyes so hard he sees red and white bursting among the black.

_Breathe._

At some point his knees had weakened and he had fallen against the shower wall, sliding down until he met the disgusting floor of the shower cubicle, his shirt bunched up to his armpits in the back, and he had started sobbing. Quietly, silently almost, because he hadn’t wanted anyone to hear. Because he still needed to breathe, and he could never seem to stop wanting for things he couldn’t seem to keep.

He just doesn’t remember doing it.

_Breathe._

“Graham?”

It’s rough, the voice that gives life to his name. Slightly panicked, belonging to Nathan, Warren knows immediately. He hears the shower curtain rustle faintly, and his heart rockets into his throat.

“Stop,” he rasps like a plea, surprising himself. He hadn’t thought he’d have the words.

The rustling stops. The sound of the shower fills the air with noise. Warren sniffs despite himself, still trying to breathe deep enough to feel, because he’s scared he’ll stop if he can’t tell he’s doing it.

_Breathe._

Nathan doesn’t try to open the curtain again, but Warren can tell he’s still there. He can’t see him or hear him—but he knows Nathan is there.

He doesn’t know how much time passes, but he knows the school and its shitty water heating system, and the water is still hot enough to steam when the shower curtain rustles again, just slightly, and the tips of Nathan’s pale fingers poke through the small opening the minute movement makes on the side. Nathan’s palm follows, and then holds, turning just enough so that the gesture is a clear offering, and no other move is made.

Warren stares at the hand. He can still hear his heart thundering in his ears, hear the wail of torture his past self cries as he fades into the back of Warren’s mind, feel the breath as it pulls into his lungs, pushes out of his throat, and pulls in again and again and again and makes Warren feel just that much more alive. Time passes, and, aside from a twitch that is nothing more than so purely _Nathan_ , the hand doesn’t move. The blue cuff on Nathan’s wrist—the cuff of _his_ jacket, Warren knows, because Nathan took Warren’s NASA jacket a while ago and won’t give it back—is saturating with water, turning it a dark navy. And still, the hand doesn’t move.

Warren takes it. Wraps his long fingers around the slick offering and grips it tight, and everything that follows happens in a blur of movement and emotion and trust.

Warren tugs gently on the hand, and Nathan springs into action, wrenching the curtain away so fast that Warren will later think he probably had his other hand gripped around it and at the ready to do exactly that. Warren isn’t given a moment to think on it as it's happening, however, because the second the curtain is thrown Nathan is launching himself into the small shower cubicle and grappling Warren’s face between the palms of his hands, one still cold from being outside and the other contrasting warmly from having been in the spray of the too-hot shower.

“What happened?” Nathan croaks, loudly, and growls a low noise and repeats, in a much quieter tone, “What _happened_?”

Warren swallows. Presses his own hands against the ones holding his cheeks in a grip that feels like it’s almost more for Nathan’s sake than his own. Opens his mouth to try and speak, then snaps his teeth shut with an audible clack when he finds he doesn’t know how to let Nathan down after all they’d been through.

It’s the wrong thing to do, and Nathan, being the different sort of human than Warren was, has the entirely wrong idea. He stills completely, just for a few too many heartbeats for Warren to be anywhere near comfortable witnessing, and his eyes widen with panic, wild and blue and suddenly pleading.

“Did you see her?” he asks, even quieter than before, like he’s talking to a ghost. “Did she try to take you back? Did you go back? Fuck, Warren, _fuck_ , are we still not done? Oh god, fuck, what are—what are we gonna— _Fuck_ , Warren.”

“No,” Warren’s rasping out before he even realizes he’s opened his mouth again, something akin to instinct taking the reins of his body and stopping Nathan’s panicked conclusion where Warren’s brain couldn’t keep up. “No,” he hushes, his fingers now digging into the ones Nathan still cradled Warren’s face with, “no, no. I didn’t. It—no. We’re done. Shit, no, we’re _done_.”

And, like his strings had been cut, Nathan slumps bonelessly against Warren, his whole body trembling beneath the wet mass that was Warren’s favorite jacket. _So much for being water-resistant_ , Warren thinks.

“What—happened?” Nathan breathes, and Warren can hear the phantoms of the curses he doesn’t add in. “Dana said— She said you were freaked out. Ran like hell out of your room like you were going to spew chunks, and then wouldn’t let her in when you hit the showers instead. You freaked her the fuck out, Warren. Holy shitting hell, she freaked me out with how freaked out she was!”

Warren pauses. There was no getting out of this, not even remotely—and even if there was, he realizes it wasn’t fair to Nathan to even try, and he was tired of always running.

“I woke up forgetting where I was,” he admits quietly. “It was one of the bad ones, where I don’t immediately realize anything.”

Nathan pulls back, shocked. “What?” he half-spits. “You haven’t had one of those in fuc—forever, what the hell? Why now?”

Warren only has to hesitate a moment too long, and Nathan knows.

“You had another,” he says, nowhere near a question, and his tone could be used to whet the sword that was his Prescott tongue. “And you didn’t tell me.”

His face is cold, then. A mask. Pinched and radiating with a hurt Warren knew he was trying to keep in, and in that very moment Warren regrets nothing more than his attempt to keep Nathan safe from the demons he already knew like his own.

Warren didn’t have to protect him anymore. He knew that.

And yet, it was something he struggled to just _let go._

“Only a couple,” Warren protests, albeit weakly. “And—they weren’t this bad. Fuck, if I had known this would happen— Don’t look at me like that, Nathan, I swear I didn’t think—”

“That’s the _problem_ with you, you fucking idiot,” Nathan cuts in, but Warren is surprised to realize, despite the expression smoldering on his face, he doesn’t sound angry. He only sounds tired. Defeated. He isn’t happy with what Warren chose to do—that much was obvious—but something has changed this time, and Warren hadn’t been paying attention enough when it had happened to know what. “You’re so smart—so _fucking_ smart—and you never think. Not about you. I don’t know if you’ve always been like this or it’s some shitass side effect of all that crap you were put through, but you don’t think about _yourself_.”

Warren doesn’t have an answer for that—even he doesn’t quite know if he was like this before the loops had taken his sense of self-preservation away from him (though he has a feeling, much like with everything else, that he wasn’t like this before)—but it doesn’t matter, because Nathan’s moved on.

“Just tell me if it happens again, for the love of all that is fuckable. Just—call me. Don’t even say anything! Pseudo butt-dial me. Just let me know so I don’t have to have Dana scaring the absolute shit out of me on the _school lawn_. I’m _begging_ you, Graham.” Nathan’s shoulders droop with the plea, his eyes rolling to look anywhere but at Warren’s face, and that’s how Warren knows Nathan is legitimately begging him. It’s such a rare thing that, for a moment, Warren can only blink in wonder at its existence.

But then Nathan’s eyes are snapping back again, waiting for an answer, and Warren can’t do anything more than inhale and promise. Because what else was he going to do? Nathan needed Warren to let him know when Warren needed him, and Warren needed Nathan to know he would never stop being needed.

It was a balance, one of many that was the essence and the foundation of their relationship, and Warren had to stop allowing that to be forgotten.

“Yeah,” he agrees on an exhale. “Okay. I can do that.”

Nathan’s eyes search his like he’s not sure if Warren is lying. He must realize Warren’s not because they hood a moment later, all the fight draining away. He drops his head with a relieved sigh and presses it into the wet expanse of Warren’s chest, breaking something in Warren in turn. Warren shudders with the feeling, pulling back to the brink of tears, and decides right then and there that he was going to do better. That he couldn’t keep being the person he had become when he’d had no other option but to make sure everyone else survived, because it was coming back to haunt him. And he knew that.

Something—Rachel, wasn’t it always Rachel? —gave him the inkling that not letting it all go was keeping him locked in, and it was destroying him with each passing blow. He had to let go to move on, and he had to start now. He had to let it all forget.

And he had to let Nathan help him do that.

“I’m sorry,” Warren tells him, feeling the point of Nathan’s nose dig into his sternum as Nathan shudders a breath. The water around them starts to grow cold, telling Warren how much time has passed, but he doesn’t have the will to move.

“Shut up,” Nathan whispers into the drenched fabric, but it sounds like he’s saying _“It’s okay.”_ “Just shut up, Warren.”

They don’t move until the water becomes unbearably cold, Nathan pulling away first and then helping Warren to his feet. It’s not until they’re pulling off their saturated clothes in favor of a stack of towels left on the sinks that Warren realizes there hadn’t been an audience to his episode, and when they emerge from the showers, he finds Trevor and Hayden are standing in front of the entrance doors to the boy’s dormitories. They both look up, Trevor taking a step forward before halting suddenly, like he hadn’t meant to move. Nathan’s fingers tighten from where they’re wrapped around Warren’s arm, holding him up as much as he is holding on, but he doesn’t tug Warren away.

Warren feels heat crawling up the back of his neck as his eyes meet first Hayden’s and then Trevor’s. They both look worried, something Warren had wanted even less than he’d wanted the breakdown. Warren had never wanted to cause such a scene.

“Dana’s keeping everyone out,” Hayden informs them quietly, though it’s obvious he’s reporting more to Nathan than to Warren. His eyes flicker to Warren and he tucks his chin into his chest like a little kid. “You okay there, Graham?”

“Yeah,” Warren croaks, then clears his throat. He’s further embarrassed to find that the action sounds weak even to his own ears, and he almost cracks a bad joke in a knee-jerk attempt to lessen the mood. “I’m okay, seriously. I’ve—” He stops dead in his tracks, unsure of how exactly to explain when he’d never said a word of what he’d gone through to either of them. It wasn’t that either of them knew nothing of Warren’s or Nathan’s problems, exactly—Hayden had been friends with Nathan longer than Warren had cared to know anything about Nathan at all, and Trevor had been there in the bathrooms that one night Warren had almost bitten his head off for no reason at all, taking care of him despite hardly knowing Warren in the first place—it was more Warren just no longer knew how to explain himself without also explaining he’d lost nearly six months to a time conundrum no one else had experienced, and it really fucked him up in the end.

He doesn’t finish his sentence, and the silence suddenly becomes deafening. Warren closes his mouth without anything to fix the problem he’d caused. He was chosen for his inability to pause until he’d fixed whatever problem was before him, and yet he had nothing left to give. Not now.

“Warren,” says Trevor quietly, making Warren’s attention snap immediately to him, and, though Trevor’s mouth stays open, he doesn’t say anything else. He looks unlike himself right in that second, saddened and colored by his unease. Warren wonders just why he keeps pulling people into a mess that was now long over, people who have nothing to do with any of it at all.

Hayden steps in, and he’s just as quiet as Trevor had been a moment before when he says, “Whatever’s wrong, you don’t have to tell us. Ever. But we’ve got your back either way, okay? We’ve got you.” His eyes flicker, and he’s unmistakably looking at Nathan when he continues, “Both of you.”

Next to him, Trevor gives a firm nod, his mouth set into a grim line. Warren feels his emotions choking up in his throat, and it’s all he can do to say, “Thanks. Thank you.”

That spurs a smile from both of them, Trevor’s tentative and Hayden’s a near-grin, and then one of the doors opens so fast it almost knocks Trevor off of his feet. Hayden jumps to grab Trevor just as Dana’s head pokes into the opening the door created, and she doesn’t spare Trevor a glance as her eyes lock onto Warren and Nathan still standing by the entrance to the showers. Her eyes are wide, but relief washes over her face at whatever she sees in their existence.

“You’re okay,” she says. She doesn’t say anything else.

“I’m okay,” Warren agrees as she pushes all the way in and heads towards him, her arms out. Nathan doesn’t even try to stop her as she envelops them both in a hug, Warren’s wet head pulled down against her shoulder, dampening the sheer black top she wore, and Nathan’s face being pressed against her own cheek like they’d never had beef between them in their lives. “I’m okay,” he whispers again as he feels himself relaxing into them both, the words quiet enough that they might have not come from him at all.

And, he realizes, it’s not even a lie. He might not always be okay, not at every moment of every day, but he got there eventually in the end. He always got there in the end. And, for now, right now he is okay.

He is okay.


	3. Chapter 3

Warren’s first warning comes in the clipped voice of the Tenth Doctor saying “Allons-y!” as it signals a text coming in, which he ignores at first, because he’s busy reading about gelatinous rainfall in certain parts of America and knows if he lets this Wiki spiral have a moment of pause, it’ll just start up all over again with renewed energy, and he didn’t want to still be engrossed when Nathan decided to show up again.

His second warning comes about a minute after the Tenth Doctor’s declaration in the form of Daft Punk informing him that they’re up all night to get lucky, telling him both that someone had changed his ringtone yet again—though he couldn’t easily choose a culprit considering both Chloe and Nathan’s past attempts at pranking him—and that whoever had sent the text was also probably the one calling him. With Nathan out at a house party with Hayden and Victoria and her posse, Warren knows he can’t just let it ring in case there’s an emergency. So he answers it.

His third warning, really, should have been tacked-on immediately following his first, because he’s been through enough instances where his life has been threatened before for there to be _some kind_ of Spidey Sense attached to the notion. Like, come on. Where were the perks to almost dying so many times?

Alas, it only comes after Victoria threatens to dislodge one of his favorite body parts and make him guzzle it if he didn’t do exactly what she was telling him to do right now and have it done, like, yesterday. Even if it wouldn’t make sense for him to do it yesterday, since it was happening in the moment, and she wasn’t aware he ever had the ability to fall through time. The guzzling is still threatened, and the fear is still real.

(He wonders if Victoria learned that one from Nathan or vice-versa, because it wasn’t a new one. He also wonders in what capacity either of them might have learned it in the first place, but then decides he probably _really_ doesn’t want to actually know.)

“And you can’t drive him back to campus, why?” Warren risks asking as he wrangles his legs into a pair of jeans he swiped off the floor of his room, cell phone shoved up with a shoulder and plastered flat to his cheek.

“I have business elsewhere, creepo,” Victoria responds. It’s a wonder he can hear her, honestly, because the music at the party she’d gone to sounds loud in the background.

Warren sighs, replacing the phone in his hand and starting the search to find the one sneaker he’d kicked off the day before and didn’t bother locating today, since he had no reason to leave his room. Well, until now. Apparently. “You were supposed to be their DD. I even asked Nathan if you were really going to, and he vouched for you.”

“Obviously. He wouldn’t throw me under the bus like that.”

_Jesus Christ._

“Jesus Christ,” Warren echoes in a sigh. “Okay, fine. Only because I know if I tell you no, he’ll ask someone else, and something tells me everyone there is blitzed out in one way or another and incapable of operating heavy machinery. That’s a non-negotiable factor.”

Victoria’s reply is swift and sharp as anything, “You saying no was a non-negotiable factor.”

“Right. Of course. That one’s on me, I should have known.” Ah, there’s the shoe. Wedged between a rule book and a cardboard box filled with comics. Warren grabs it and crams his foot in. “You have his keys?”

Victoria scoffs, and if she’s at all drunk, Warren can’t tell by the perfect execution of the noise of disgust. She would go places, if there was ever a market for Absolute Destestment and Other Annoyed Noises. “Cut the stupid questions and get over here. I sent the address, don’t bother me again.” And then she ends the call before Warren can say a word more.

Warren sighs and stows his phone away in his pocket, grabbing his jacket from where it hung haphazardly from the corner of a lamp Nathan had stored in Warren’s room earlier that day for a reason he had yet to divulge, and grabs only his car keys after hunting around for a good fifteen minutes and failing to find his room key. If someone stole his stuff, he was going to blame Nathan, because it was his fault Warren kept misplacing the damn thing.

(Not that Nathan would care. He got blamed for things that weren’t his fault enough for things that happened to actually be his fault not to matter much, unless they had dire consequences attached. And there was no way Warren could be dire about anything short of someone getting killed—and Nathan knew that.)

“Grow a spine, Warren,” he mutters to himself grumpily as he veers out of his room and slams his door shut behind him, too caught up in his own self-made petty angst to realize someone was directly in his path until it was too late and he was barreling directly into the chest of one poor Trevor Yard.

“Whoa, Graham my man!” Trevor exclaims, his hands planting firmly down on Warren’s shoulders and anchoring him there. Warren notices offhandedly that he was now taller than Trevor, too, if only just. Weird.

“Hey, man,” Warren greets sheepishly, his hands automatically reaching up to cup the points of Trevor’s elbows. “Sorry for nearly steamrolling you,” he says, then fakes a cough and tacks on, “ _again_.”

But Trevor only grins. “You got places to be, no worries.”

Warren snorts, pulling a hand away to rub it along the back of his neck. “Not ones I want to be.”

Trevor’s smile drops. Warren can feel the fingers curving around his shoulders tighten their hold. “Are you being forced into something?”

There’s a look on his face that Warren can’t interpret. He wonders if Trevor thinks it’s Nathan’s doing, and immediately feels a spike of irritation despite himself. He squashes that down, because he _likes_ Trevor, and it’s not like he was wrong. Trevor was only looking out for Warren, which, had the positions been switched and Trevor had still wanted to be Warren’s friend, Warren can’t say he wouldn’t try to do the same. Nathan was still a sketchy individual to anyone who didn't know him—and, of course, that was nearly the entire Blackwell student body, so, really, he shouldn’t even attempt at faulting Trevor in the first place.

… If that’s what Trevor was even thinking that. Warren was probably jumping to conclusions.

“Forced is a strong way to put it,” says Warren sheepishly. Trevor’s eyes dart towards Nathan’s door, and, okay. Maybe Warren wasn’t jumping anywhere. “It’s not what you’re thinking, though. Probably. Most likely?”

Trevor’s lips quirk back into a small smile, the minute reassurance apparently enough for him to relax away from the tension of whatever possible situation he’d been worried about. It makes Warren question just how much Trevor trusted Warren’s word, because, with anyone else, he knew he’d have more of a battle to gain some calm.

 _That’s because everyone else knows you lied to them_ , he reminds himself sharply, and he had. At least at some point in time. In Nathan’s case? Despite having basically told him everything the moment he woke up in the final loop? The fact he’d lied in past loops were what kept him from skimming by under the wire most of the time, because he’d been an idiot and told Nathan that part, too.

 _That’s not fair_ , he pushes back against himself. _Nathan wouldn’t trust you immediately even if you hadn’t told him you’d lied._

And Warren knows he’s right. Because that was just Nathan. Nathan trusted Warren, but he was careful about that trust. He only gave it immediately when he knew he needed to.

“Hey.” A gentle voice accompanied by a slight jostle to his arm pulls him back, and Warren blinks rapidly at the worried face of Trevor, whom he’d totally forgotten about. “Earth to Warren, did I lose you? You alright?”

“Yeah, yeah!” Warren says hastily—too hastily, if Trevor’s expression is any indication. Warren clears his throat, pulls away slightly. “Long night. Wikipedia spirals! They can be a real bitch.”

“Oh, yeah,” Trevor agrees. “Been there too many times. Creepy shit, some of the stuff you can find.” He pauses, but not long enough for Warren to think of a way to get going before he speaks again. “Where are you going, man? Is it bad?”

“No, no,” protests Warren, still too hastily, dammit. He needed to calm down. “Nathan and Hayden are at a house party with Victoria and Taylor and— Yeah, you know the crew. Victoria’s sticking around, I guess, and Nathan can’t drive with how he is after partying. I’m picking him up.” He frowns. “I don’t actually know how the others are getting home,” he realizes. “I was just called to pick Nathan up.”

“We can ask when we get there,” Trevor says, finally releasing Warren, and Warren turns in surprise as Trevor starts walking down the hall towards the exit.

“We?” he repeats, no less than a little tentative as he catches up to Trevor’s side.

“You’re spacing out, dude. You’re always a space cadet, but, man, I’m not letting you out at a party alone when you’re losing it on me in the dorms.”

That throws Warren completely off guard. He knows that Trevor is a nice person, he’d shown as much in the past months with how much he wanted to be included in the nerdy things Warren liked to do, but this? This went beyond what Warren had expected out of the guy. And, really, that was his bad.

Why the hell was he so bad at judging the character of his dorm mates? Jeez. And he thought he was a good judge of character, too. So much for that.

“Okay,” Warren agrees faintly as they lope onto the asphalt of the school’s parking lot, his hand already in his pocket to fish out his keys.

Trevor throws Warren another grin as the doors are unlocked, but then eyes Warren’s car warily as he slides into the seat. “You know,” he starts conversationally, snapping his seatbelt buckle into place while Warren turns the car on, “this thing looks so much better at a distance, no offense.”

“Uh, offense taken! I bought it when I was sixteen,” Warren responds, throwing the shift into reverse and backing up, only slightly knocking his head against the roof this time when he turns around to look. He needed to lower his seat a little more, apparently, and does so. “Some of us here actually need the scholarship we’re on. Take the boons of freedom life offers, Grasshopper. Cheap, shitty transpiration or not.”

Trevor holds his hands up, grinning. Most people would look like a dick, presenting the gesture after a comment about how derelict the state of the vehicle was, but Trevor manages to make it look as innocent as it probably actually was, damn the guy.

“So long as I don’t get tetanus, I’m game.”

Warren rolls his eyes in Trevor’s general direction, mentally patting Trevor on the back for even knowing what tetanus is, before the less asshole-ish side reminds him that just because everyone else at the school might not be as smart as him, it didn’t mean they were dumb. Blackwell Academy wasn’t exactly easy to get into, after all. That didn’t make the accusation any less _rude_ , though.

“Everyone’s a critic,” Warren mutters, pulling out of the student parking lot, and Trevor only laughs in response.

* * *

They end up needing Trevor’s GPS about ten minutes into the drive when Warren realizes he isn’t as familiar with the outskirts of Arcadia Bay as he probably should be by now, and then stop needing Trevor’s GPS two streets before finding the one that the house actually sits on thanks to the volume of the music the premises is emitting. Warren is both shocked and amazed no one has called the cops yet, because _deafening_ doesn’t even begin to cover the noise that greets him when he parks the car in an empty lot four odd houses down the road and pulls himself out. Trevor meets him at the trunk, looking like he was second-guessing everything about this whole ordeal, and they share a look before turning and making their way down the street and to the party.

“I knew there were big parties around here, but my imagination apparently sucks, because I didn’t think this is what we were getting into,” Trevor remarks to Warren as they press close together to be heard, his voice a low rumble just barely heard over the pounding of the bass in Warren’s ear, then jerks away in order to narrowly avoid the careening path of a probably-drunken girl as she thundered between them with another girl on her shoulders, both hollering like they were at a concert and the limited-edition T-shirt gun had majorly misfired off into the distance. Warren turns to watch them continue on, both in curiosity of where they were going and in mental calculation of how far they could get with how much momentum they seem to have gained, but Trevor doesn’t, and it takes him a moment to notice Warren’s lagged behind.

“Blood in the water, Shark Bait?” he calls good-naturedly.

Warren winces and turns, jogging a little to return to Trevor’s side. “That nickname is never going to leave me, is it.”

Trevor snorts. “Not for as long as you keep tangling tongues with a biter. Not that I’m judging!” Trevor says quickly, turning so fast to face Warren that he nearly trips over the toe of his own shoe. _No wonder he wipes out so much_ , Warren thinks.

“If anything,” Warren reassures, “I’d say you were one of the more accepting of the whole ordeal, considering you found out before most of the school.”

That seems to placate Trevor, because he gives Warren a smile reminiscent of a happy puppy dog before suddenly going still as a statue. He clears his throat, maybe twice, but the music is so loud that Warren can only judge by the way his Adam’s apple bobs with the movement, and the count is fairly indeterminate.

“You good?” Warren asks him, ducking his head.

Trevor laughs, but it’s a nervous laugh if Warren’s ever heard one. “That’s why you were bleeding, wasn’t it? That whole fight you two had, back in November. Your mouth was bleeding when I found you in the stalls, and it was because he bit you, didn’t he,” he asks, but it sounds less like a question the second time Warren runs it by himself in his head. The quiet swear Trevor tacks on doesn’t make it sound any more like one, either. “He better not be biting other places.”

Warren cringes and shoves his shoulder into Trevor, knocking him off-kilter. He lets out a faint yelp, but then starts laughing, and all the tension is gone in a flash.

“I hated _everything_ about that statement, just for the record,” Warren mumbles, but, judging by the loud _“What?”_ Trevor offers in return, Trevor didn’t hear him. Warren only shakes his head and grabs Trevor by the arm, and into the fray they go.

* * *

They’re met immediately by a gaggle of females in smeared makeup taking selfies on the front porch. Warren can’t help but gawk at the shimmering bikini tops they’re clad in despite himself, like he’s never seen a girl in a scanty swimsuit before (which—come on, he technically hasn’t, if movies and porn don’t count), and Trevor yanking him on ahead is the only thing to save him when one of them looks up and gives him a smile worthy of a lioness.

They don’t get far from the girls, though, before one is calling out to them with a “hey, you two!” and Trevor winces to a full stop two steps up the porch.

“You gotta pay to get into this party,” the girl informs them as she saunters up, a little unsteadily despite her bare feet, and her friend giggles and holds her hand out for what Warren presumes is the fee until the first girl gently pushes her hand away. “Not money,” she corrects, her eyes never leaving Trevor. “Give us something good.”

“Good?” Trevor repeats, frowning at Warren, who can only shrug. He’s not exactly a master of parties, and the biggest ones he’s ever hit have been Vortex ones, which, at most, had a monetary fee. “Uh, we don’t have drugs?” Trevor tries, then starts pulling out his pockets as if to prove his statement.

“Or alcohol,” Warren tacks on.

“Yeah, so— Whoa, okay!” Trevor stumbles away, into the step behind him, and nearly falls when the first girl goes in with her arms like she was trying for a hug with some face. Warren makes a noise of surprise and lunges for Trevor, but Trevor’s a lot heavier than he looks, and they both tumble onto the top of the porch with a thud.

“Ow,” Warren moans.

“Sorry,” Trevor croaks.

“Ew,” the girl sneers, and, before Warren can even blink, she vanishes with her friend without another word.

“Did— Did I just imagine that?” Warren says, sitting up and blinking. The girls were gone. _Completely._ “Where did they go?”

“You didn’t imagine it,” assures Trevor grimly, rubbing his head as he pulls Warren to his feet.

They huddle together as they flee, Trevor’s face so close to Warren’s that he can hear him breathing as they move around the wrap-around porch to the back of the house.

“Dana’s going to kill me,” he whispers, his fingers twisting in the cuff of his jacket absentmindedly, and Warren finds himself nearly physically restraining his own hand against reaching out and stopping the fidget, like he might’ve had Nathan been the one executing the action.

 _Get ahold of yourself, Graham,_ he chastises.

“You didn’t ask for that to happen,” Warren reminds him, pressing a hand against Trevor’s shoulder and gently pushing him away again so he couldn’t trip on Trevor’s close steps. “Dana’s pretty understanding anyway. It’ll be fine.”

He should have known better, anyway, considering the lawn was filled with drunk humans having what looks like either the best or worst time of their lives as they trek their way around and through the house. None of them wore anything identifying them as an admittee, so, clearly, the girls were trying to play them.

They break apart when they reach the backyard, where a giant pool sits steaming into the cold air, filled to the brim with people in various states of undress.

Warren swallows and tries his best not to stare. Again. “Okay. We’re here for Nathan. If I were Nathan, where would I be?”

Trevor glances around. “Uh,” he tries, then shrugs, “literally anywhere? This place is _massive_. Can’t you call him?”

But Warren shakes his head. “Victoria is the one who contacted me. She wouldn’t bother with me if it didn’t mean Nathan couldn’t do it himself for one reason or another.”

Trevor opens his mouth to reply, seems to consider himself, and sighs. “Yeah, okay. Makes sense. I’ll check inside, yeah?”

Warren turns his gaze back on to the pool. “... Sure. Yeah. Fantastic. Wet people. _Love_ it.”

“Enjoy the sights while you can,” Trevor says happily, clapping Warren on the back, and then all but vanishing into the shadows of the party. How, Warren really can’t understand, but he’s seen enough weird shit not to question it for now.

“Here we go,” he mutters to himself just as someone yells “Cannonball!” and five people jump into the pool at once.

Operation “Where’s Waldon’t Make This Easy For Warren, Why Would You Do That?” … _commence_.

(The title is a work in progress.)

* * *

Finding Nathan … turns out much easier than is expected.

Keeping Nathan, though? Much harder than anticipated.

Warren finds Nathan not even ten minutes after breaking from Trevor on the independent search, chanting “chug, chug, chug, chug!” with a group of people huddled around a keg with someone—is that _Hayden?_ —upside down and, well, chugging.

“Graham?” Nathan says in surprise before Warren can even get close enough to call Nathan’s name without freaking him out. He blinks a few times in confusion, then pulls a face of annoyance when he realizes why Warren must be here after declining to come when asked earlier in the day. “Aw, _fuck_ me. Vic’s bailin’?”

He’s slurring so much, Warren thinks he maybe should have shown up earlier and not wasted so much time, you know, driving the speed limit. Shit.

Warren reaches out all the same and grabs Nathan’s hand, which turns in his palm and latches on.

“Rescue squad, at your service,” he announces. The person on the keg is released, and Nathan whoops his glee at what is indeed Hayden. Okay. Great. “Am I supposed to be taking Hayden home, too?”

“Warren Graham!” Hayden greets happily before Warren can get an answer, lunging drunkenly at Warren and wrapping him up in a hug. He reeks of alcohol and sweat and _beer, so much beer_ , and Warren tries his best not to gag. He definitely doesn't manage. Hayden doesn’t seem to notice, making a noise deep in his throat that Warren is pretty sure is a half-step from becoming a laugh, but that Hayden is way too drunk to bring to completion.

Yikes.

“Hayden,” Warren struggles, trying to not suffocate in Hayden all on his own, Nathan’s guffawing not helping anything at all. “ _Hayden_. Let me go, for the love of Sputnik, _please._ ”

“Oop, ah, sorry!” Hayden says, finally releasing Warren. He grins down at Warren, and if it weren’t for the way he sways slightly while even standing still, everything about him right in that moment would seem perfectly sober.

Warren struggles to regain himself after the interaction. Nathan’s still laughing, bent over at the waist, and so obviously drunk in clear contrast to Hayden’s weird sudden pseudo-sobriety.

“What are you _doing_ here, dude?” Hayden asks before Warren’s recovered, and, there, he _sounds_ drunk. Mostly. It was all smoke and mirrors, totally wouldn’t pass a standardized field sobriety test.

“Vic’s got ‘im takin’ us home!” Nathan offers, apparently over himself, and Hayden’s face falls.

“No!” he stage-whispers, scandalized, and looks to the house forlornly. “I didn’t get to dance!”

“I gotta talk to Vic,” Nathan announces suddenly, then turns and starts to leave. Warren maybe overreacts just a little and literally jumps after him, grabbing his arm to stop him in his tracks.

“Wait!” he calls frantically, and Nathan looks back at him like he’s lost his goddamn mind. “What if I can’t find you again?” he tries meekly once he’s tried at a recovery. He doesn’t release Nathan.

Hayden offers insight on this: “Not that big of a place.”

“Not a big fuckin’ place, bitch,” Nathan echoes, like it was his idea.

“Nathan, there are so many people here,” Warren says, and he wouldn’t exactly deny that it’s a half-whine. He just really wants to get out of there. It’s so not his scene, and he’s so over parties as a whole, Vortex-hosted or not. “ _So_ many,” he pushes when Nathan only frowns, bored. “What if I can’t find you?”

“Call me. Duh.”

“And if you don’t answer your phone like you haven’t been all freaking night?”

Nathan seems to consider this, his free hand tapping on his chin, as the party around them screams, shouts, and generally gives Warren a headache. Then, he snaps his fingers, and Warren is immediately sure that the answer he wants is _not_ coming. Nathan was never this easy.

“I’ll come lookin’ for you,” Nathan decides firmly, and, yeah, definitely not what Warren wanted, but Nathan’s hand slaps over Warren’s mouth before he can say so. “Come on, Graham. I’m havin’ fun. Just need t’ talk to Vic. ‘Kay?”

Too tired to argue about it any more, Warren only nods his head once, and he’s released. Nathan pries Warren’s hand off his arm and smiles his half smile.

“Hold this f’r me,” he slurs, swaying forward as he digs in his pocket and deposits a handful of items into Warren’s outstretched palm, then staggers away to god knows where. Warren watches him go, then looks to his hand to find the stub of what he was pretty sure was a blunt, along with a dime, two quarters, a key— _his_ key, dammit Nathan—and three and a half peanuts.

From his left, Hayden bends over and surveys the contents of Warren’s palm with an almost-sober level of scrutiny, then gives a snort of a giggle and plucks two of the peanuts away from where they’re nestled between the dime and the key. Warren hears the crunch before he has the chance to even think of maybe stopping the drunk guy from eating something that had been in Nathan’s pocket for lord knows how long, and the deed is done.

“Gross,” Hayden comments shortly, without any inflection to his garble of the statement, then ambles off in the direction Nathan had vanished, leaving Warren alone amongst the strangers that littered the backyard.

“Why me?” he whispers to himself, and then has to beg off a girl when she tries to answer the question for him in something that sounds like it’s supposed to be English, but isn’t coherent enough to actually be intelligible.

* * *

He finds Trevor again next while he’s trying to hunt Nathan and Hayden back down, looking a little lost in the small sea of people surrounding him as he stands in the dead center of a tiny kitchen with a multitude of snacks in his hands, all the cabinets around him flung open and more than one person petting his face and arms.

His eyes light up the second he spots Warren, but his hands are too full to do anything more than nod his head enthusiastically for a few seconds before one of the girls in the cluster reaches out and jostles his shoulder in that sloppy but endearing kind of way only drunk people can really execute. He looks down at her, blinking in surprise, then says something Warren can’t hear over the noise of the party and starts opening one of the many bags clutched in his grip. Granola, it looks like from where Warren stands. Or trail mix? Something like that.

“Hey!” one guy slurs as Warren tries to wiggle his way closer to Trevor, grabbing Warren around the waist to stop him from continuing his journey. “Wait your turn!”

Warren blinks down at the guy. “What? No, I’m— My turn for what?”

The guy releases Warren to gesture at Trevor like he was presenting Warren with the presence of a god of some higher status. “Magic fingers!” he declares, fumbling on the word “fingers” and punctuating the statement with an ill-timed thrust of both hands. “He’s got magic fingers! You have to wait your turn to use them!”

Warren blinks owlishly, first at the heavily-intoxicated man, and then at his friend, who’s now in the middle of ripping open a packet of fruit snacks and handing it to a sobbing boy who doesn’t look any older than Warren himself.

“... He’s opening food for you guys?” Warren concludes and, as if the universe was on his side for once, witnesses his confirmation in the form of a redheaded girl with raccoon eyes fumbling with a family-sized bag of Cheetos before Trevor takes it from her and does the deed, earning himself a squeal of delight and a clap of the hands like he’d performed a miracle.

“My fingers aren’t magic!” Drunk Guy informs Warren in wonder. Warren realizes a second later that the hand is back on his waist, but he’s not sure if the guy himself realizes it or not.

“I mean,” Warren tries, taking the guy’s hand off so he can move again, “that’s great he’s pulling a Rasputin on you and all, but I kinda need to talk to him.”

The response he gets is one of incredulity, and the guy looks legitimately offended even as his hand latches back onto Warren’s torso the second it’s freed from Warren’s grip of removal. “You gotta wait your _turn_!”

"I got 'im," a new voice chimes in suddenly, and then the next thing Warren knows, he’s being forcibly removed from the kitchen.

 _The next thing Warren knows_ , Hayden’s arm is in a vice-locked grip around his shoulders and he’s being lead into the fray of sweating, writhing people the next room over.

Exactly the place he had been avoiding since even being aware he was going to have to set foot on the premises of the party.

“Whoa, wait, hold up,” he says frantically, scrabbling at the hold Hayden has on him. It’s no use—Hayden was a big guy, and his grip was akin to that of King Kong, with Warren as the unwilling damsel in distress. “No, no, nuh-uh, no. Can’t dance, Hayden!”

Hayden laughs, the music doing nothing but amplifying the sound of it. “You don’t have to know how to dance! It’s a party, man, you need to chillax a little more! Have some _fun_.”

“I’m not here to _chillax_ ,” Warren protests as Hayden’s hands grab his and tries their best to get Warren to add to the communal gyration happening all around them. “I’m here to take Nathan back to the school, but he keeps vanishing on me.”

“S’cause he’s having fun. They got all the good shit here—Nathan doesn’t have to play delivery boy for once!”

“Hope he’s not mixing drugs,” Warren mutters to himself, trying his best to twist out of the way when someone’s ass bounces into his hip and pushes him further into Hayden’s hold.

“He doesn’t do that kind of stuff anymore,” Hayden replies, like he heard Warren somehow, then spins Warren around while he’s too caught off guard to physically revolt. The noise he releases in response is decidedly not girly, and, no, he won’t take constructive criticism on that.

Hayden laughs all the same, and then his head drops dangerously close to Warren’s as he leans in, still dancing awkwardly against Warren’s half-stuttered forced moves that are somewhere between trying to get away and trying not to get smothered by the people _way too up_ _in his personal bubble_ _right now._ “Okay, Sherlock, he’s right over there,” Hayden half-sings. Why, Warren can’t deduce, because his tempo is nowhere near that of the song’s. He also gives no indication of where “right over there” is, exactly, and Warren’s jolted looking around doesn’t remedy the mystery.

Hayden groans, then wrenches Warren’s head in the right direction.“You’re being such a mood-killer,” he grumbles. “He’s gonna hate that if he sees.”

Warren doesn’t have an answer for that, and he doesn’t have a moment to think of one before he finally catches sight of Nathan, sans the jacket he’d been wearing the last time Warren had run into him, dancing in what seemed to be dead center of the dance floor (of course, where else would _Nathan Prescott_ be?) with Victoria close at hand.

They make a remarkably good-looking pair, is the first thing that Warren thinks once they register in his brain as people he knows and can put names to amongst the sea of strangers. Nathan’s head is bent in such a way that his light brown hair, freed from its usual styled prison by means Warren doesn’t think he wants to know of, mixes with Victoria’s golden blonde as their foreheads press together, Victoria leading the dance with one hand wrapped around Nathan’s jaw and the other at his hips. Nathan, high on whatever the hell it is he’s actually taken, does nothing more than sway with Victoria, and yet it still manages to come off as exactly what the music calls for.

It’s hot— _they’r_ e hot, Warren thinks, and holy _shit_ —it spikes a hot flare of irritation from somewhere deep inside him, that they looked so perfect together, that they looked like they were _made_ for each other—and that, in reality, they probably were. It must result in some physical reaction, because Hayden stills momentarily, something like a question coming from his mouth without registering as actual words in Warren’s head, but then Victoria’s eyes are opening and centering on him in, and the green coating his vision immediately melts away as she throws him a smirk and pushes away from Nathan.

“About time, Pumpkin Boy,” she calls cryptically, Nathan raising his head just in time to witness Victoria grab Warren by the collar and haul his ass right where she wants it—which apparently is where she’d been dancing just previously. He nearly wipes out when his foot lands wrong on the floor, but Nathan catches on fast enough to keep Warren from eating anything more than his own yelp of alarm, his cold hands gripped tight on the skin under Warren’s shirt where it had rucked up from Victoria’s ministrations.

“The fuck am I going to do with you?” Nathan asks acidly as he helps right Warren, shaking his head in a way Warren’s pretty sure he’s seen on a principal once. In a movie. About delinquents. Which he certainly wasn’t.

(Those past brawls notwithstanding, as they weren’t part of his current loop, thank you very much.)

“I’m not here to dance, Nathan,” Warren protests, but he’s already moving along with Nathan despite himself, and it seems like all of Nathan’s moves were in Victoria, because he’s not much better at it. “I’m here to take you home.”

Nathan all but ignores everything coming out of Warren’s mouth in favor of sliding his fingers through Warren’s belt loops and holding him anchor. “Yeah, well I’m here to fucking dance,” he all but growls, somehow sounding leagues more sober than he had just before. “Pick up your feet.” 

“Oh, at least make it _worth my while_ ,” he whines sarcastically, voice low, and then sighs heavily as a new song starts up, a little slower than the previous one. He isn’t aware Nathan can even hear him up until the moment when Nathan’s eyes flash something dangerous in response. His lips curl, his hands tug, and, before he realizes what’s happening, Warren finds himself flush up against Nathan’s chest. His heart nearly stops right then and there.

“Nathan—” he chokes, then stops abruptly when Nathan tilts his head back and runs the sharp of his teeth against Warren’s ear. It’s more action than he’s ever gotten in real life, and the fact it’s not happening in his head sends him into a tailspin of contradiction as his body both wants to respond and knows now is _not the time or the place_.

He feels, rather than sees, Nathan grin in triumph, and Warren realizes he was having trouble breathing, making his mindset on the whole thing blatantly obvious. Nathan’s hands crawl up Warren’s sides, his ever-cold fingers tracing icy paths along Warren’s skin, and Warren closes his eyes and gulps loud enough to, in Nathan’s opinion, break the sound barrier.

“Oh, my god,” he gasps, and Nathan’s laugh puffs against his neck. “Now? You’re choosing _now_ to do this? You’re playing so dirty! I’m supposed to be _taking you home_ , Nathan.”

Nathan hums, deep and enticing, and Warren feels it resonate in his sternum.

Jesus. That was so not appropriate. Warren hates what that does to—well, _all_ of him. He’s lucky Nathan isn’t in the consenting mindset, because, otherwise, he wasn’t so sure he’d be able to stop himself from allowing Nathan to take it elsewhere. Thank you, moral code.

It doesn’t stop Nathan from being the most attractive thing he’s ever seen, though. He wonders, vaguely, if he can convince Nathan to keep the messy look, but the thought is gone in a blink when Nathan presses his nose into the hollow under Warren’s ear.

_Shit._

“ _Nathan_ —” he tries again, only to fail once more when Nathan’s fingertips turn to nails and it’s all he can do not to outright gasp.

“Tell me to cut the shit, and I will,” Nathan murmurs, the words ghosting along Warren’s jaw, and everything in Warren’s brain comes to a screeching halt. Nathan’s breathing hitches, the warmth of the bodies around them seeping in deep, and Warren feels it race all along his spine. “I will stop,” Nathan continues, so quiet Warren almost can’t hear him, “I swear.”

Warren swallows, gentler this time, and Nathan brushes his lips against Warren’s chin.

“Tell me,” he breathes, “and I will.”

Warren drops his head and doesn’t say a word.

* * *

The night from there is a blur, up until the point where the songs pick up to a speed even Nathan finds he’s too tired to keep up with, and Warren is positive he doesn’t come away unscathed. A public setting and dubious consent from Nathan while drunk means he didn’t allow anything more than a lot of close movement and fluttering touches, fingers drifting and breathing stuttered—but that doesn’t mean he won’t be having dreams of more, even after Nathan pulled him from the trance he’d been put under with a jostle of a shoulder and a grin so sharp Warren could have used it to carve ice.

They find Hayden sprawled out on the porch deck when they go looking for him, waiting for them to wrap it up and move on with their night, a few equally worn out people sitting around him and listening as he told a tale Warren doesn’t manage to catch more than a few words of before they’re all saying goodbye to one another and Hayden is walking away with a few numbers and emails scrawled on his arms in purple ink. They stumble away from the party and head towards Warren’s car, heads echoing with the phantoms of the songs they leave behind.

Warren doesn’t see Trevor anywhere on the outskirts and, if he doesn’t find him along the way, decides he’ll just text or call him once he gets the other two safely in the car, because he doesn't want to risk taking them back in and potentially get caught up in something else, like he knew his luck was bound to allow.

Nathan and Hayden flank Warren’s sides as they amble along, Hayden with his eyes closed and humming one of the songs from earlier, and Nathan with his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jacket, recovered from God knows where, because Warren hadn’t seen him do it, and his cheeks ruddy from either the cold or his own ministrations, Warren isn’t sure.

His heart is just managing to slow its rhythm after the strain it’s been put through, and he tries to focus on relaxing completely before starting up the drive back, listening to Hayden softly hum his own tune, completely different from the bass that still echoed from the house and down the street. It’s an easy thing, Warren thinks.

But then he spots something out of the corner of his eye and turns to it fast enough to get whiplash, almost knocking himself off his feet with the momentum of the action.

And, suddenly, Nathan is completely sober.

“What? What is it? Where’s the fucking inferno?” he barks, the words coming out so fast they nearly clip each other off as they’re spoken. “Graham? Hey!” Nathan pushes when Warren only slumps down, holding his chest like he’d nearly been startled to death. He grabs Warren by the shoulder in a pinching hold and shakes him. “What was that, you bitch? Tell me!”

“Deer,” Warren explains tiredly, gesturing to the only animal decoration capable of giving him a panic attack by doing nothing more than existing. It was just a plastic deer that lit up at night, sure, but it was a bastard in its own right, adorable exaggerated eyes and all.

Nathan curses sharply in response. Warren reaches up and presses a hand to Nathan’s, and Nathan’s fingers immediately relax.

Hayden stares at the both of them, the alarm on his face so _wrong_ that Warren accidentally lets out a startled laugh. Hayden’s gaze centers on Warren alone, and Nathan leans away from Warren in obvious distaste.

“The fuck was that?” he accuses, and Hayden nods his head once.

“Uh, yeah, was gonna ask both of you the same, actually,” he says hesitantly. He doesn’t stop looking at Warren. “Did you just get jump-scared by a fake deer?”

“I, uh—” Warren starts, but Nathan smacks him in the chest to stop him and finishes quickly with: “got attacked by one as a baby. Walked right up to his stroller and tried to eat his face off!”

Warren blinks down at Nathan, and Hayden looks as if he isn’t sure Nathan is exactly telling the truth, but doesn’t know enough about deer attacks to exactly question it.

“Er—” Warren offers, scrambling, and just then Trevor manifests on the scene, looking haggard.

“Who tried to eat whose face off?” he asks breathlessly, turning wide, haunted eyes on Warren, and Warren immediately feels bad for leaving him alone.

“Graham,” Hayden offers faintly, then frowns and reaches out to finger the object Warren just then realizes is hanging from around Trevor’s neck. “What—”

“Is that a bathtub plug?” Nathan asks loudly, effectively cutting the quieter inquiry from Hayden off.

Trevor ducks his head. “Uh, yeah. They gave it to me. Said it was a prize for being the miracle man and—um, saving the party.”

Nathan gapes. Warren tries not to start laughing again. Hayden hasn’t removed his fingers from the rubber bung.

“The shit did you do?” Nathan asks incredulously.

“Opened—food?” Trevor replies, so hesitant that Warren thinks he’s possibly questioning the reality of what he just went through. Warren can’t say he doesn’t relate.

“Wow,” Nathan muses. “The world has low standards.”

“Look who’s talking,” Warren mutters, and only snickers when Nathan turns and slugs him on the arm before walking off again.

Hayden releases Trevor’s makeshift medal, and they all follow after. They’re maybe a house and a half away, walking in relative silence for no more than a minute, when Nathan does what he always does best: decides quiet is not his favorite way to occupy the time.

“So why’d you bring that fuckbucket?” Nathan asks, eloquent as always, jabbing a thumb in Trevor’s direction and effectively breaking the—in Warren’s opinion anyway—enjoyable silence.

Trevor jumps, blinking rapidly, like someone just slotted a coin in and brought him to life. The plug swings violently with the motion. “Ran into him in the hallway,” Trevor explains after a moment, and Warren thinks it’s pretty nice of him to dignify Nathan’s childish acid with a response they all know it doesn’t deserve. “Didn’t think it was a good idea sending him into the fray alone like that, when people could take advantage of him.”

“What?” says Warren, blinking at Trevor in surprise. He didn’t know that last part.

Nathan scoffs. “It’s just a college party. Warren’s not some candy-assed pansy man, he can manage the scene. Victoria wouldn’t have texted him if he couldn’t handle it.”

Trevor just slides his eyes in Warren’s direction, radiating dubiousness over Nathan’s statement, but he thankfully keeps his mouth shut. Warren wants to be on Nathan’s side, because Warren certainly _can_ handle it, but Victoria? Would truss him up in a Chicago overcoat and throw him in the deep end just to watch him drown. She’d even supply the cement to help the deed along. There was no love lost between them, and Warren knew she would have texted him to come collect Nathan even if it meant bodily injury along the way.

Nathan meant far more to her than Warren did, far more than Warren knew he ever would. And Warren was okay with that.

“Shotgun!” Nathan hollers suddenly, nearly leaping off the street as he bolts towards the shadowed shape that was Warren’s car. Hayden makes a noise of offense, reminding Warren of his presence, and takes off at a run after Nathan.

“You still happy you signed up for this?” Warren asks Trevor as they watch their two classmates barrel into first the car, and then each other, cursing and spitting and laughing.

“No,” Trevor admits, fidgeting with his rubber prize, “but I’m not mad I came with you. I really didn’t want to just let you go to something like this on your own.”

Warren huffs quietly. “I can handle myself, you don’t have to be my knight in shining armor.”

Trevor looks over at Warren, his face wrinkled up, and he shakes his head. “No, not like that. You’re my friend. I got your back, Warren.” Trevor’s arm reaches out, and Warren feels his hand pat once, twice, before transitioning into that comforting rub Warren could never quite perfect without it coming off as slightly creepy, but that Trevor seems to be a master of. Warren feels tension he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in his shoulders relax.

“Thanks, man,” Warren says, and he means it. “Not exactly easy finding the real ones in a school full of wannabes and fakesters.”

“And yet you seem to be racking them up,” Trevor replies with a pointed look in the direction of the car, where Hayden and Nathan have piled in the back and can be seen pushing each other back and forth in the back seats. So much for Nathan’s declaration of shotgun. Trevor sighs. “You ready for this drive back?”

“Not even close. Don’t be surprised if Nathan argues with you about getting the front seat.”

“But he’s in the back.”

“You think that’ll stop him?”

Trevor puffs his cheeks out. “Right. Prescott, coming in hot. I’m ready.”

“That’s what you think,” Warren mutters. They share a look over the hood when they reach the car, Hayden smooshed against the window on Warren's side by Nathan's pale hand, then Warren reaches for his door in the same moment Trevor does, and into the car they go, Nathan's cackling ringing out sharply into the night.

* * *

They stop at a drive-through farther away from the school than where they started, solely to distract Nathan from pestering Trevor about taking his seat up front and from badgering Warren to do exactly what he ended up doing. It’s a little chaotic, going through the window at such an early hour when only one poor employee was working the entire establishment, especially when both Hayden and Nathan decide they absolutely have to give the guy their order themselves and not relay it to Warren because they “know Warren will fuck it up” (Nathan’s words, but Hayden’s nod had been an affirmation, so Warren was holding the insult against him, too), and then take entirely too long trying to make their order coherent.

Warren tries to give the guy his best “I’m so fucking sorry we exist” expression when he rolls up to the window, but the guy is not impressed, and Warren really can’t blame him. Nathan shoves his card up before Warren can even reach for his wallet, decidedly paying for all of them, and Warren only sighs when Nathan refuses to let Warren hand the card up.

(Nathan nearly climbs over Warren’s lap to give the card over, and Warren finds absolutely none of the action enticing in any remote sense. Not even when Nathan sloppily smacks his lips against Warren’s forehead on the way back, because the guy sees, and he only raises his eyebrows before silently handing the food over and closing the window in their face.)

They scarf their meals down with no small amount of stealing from first Nathan, then Hayden and Trevor, and finally Warren once he hits a red light and nearly throws himself across the car to snatch the curly fry right out of Trevor’s grasp, laughing and jabbing and essentially having what Warren might dare even call one of the best late-night escapades he’s ever had in his life.

The food is gone within fifteen minutes of receiving it, and Hayden begs Warren to crank the radio up as high as it’ll go for the remaining ten-minute drive they had into the sound-restricted street the school sat on, his hands on Warren’s seat and his chin digging uncomfortably into Warren’s shoulder. Warren obliges, and they all crow and sing off-tune to 80s favorites—courtesy of the only station his sad excuse of a car can get so late at night. Trevor proves to have the best voice of them all, and Nathan retaliates to this newfound information by trying to smother Trevor’s mouth with his hands, which he fails epically at.

They cut the music as they pull up on the street, but they’re laughing loud enough for it not to matter, giddy and high on the energy between them.

Tumbling from the car, Hayden and Trevor lock arms and take off towards the dormitories, singing Bon Jovi’s _You Give Love a Bad Name_ in what could probably be considered acapella if Warren had any understanding of music whatsoever, and Nathan and Warren trail behind them, tangled up in each other, Warren laughing so hard he’s sobbing and Nathan’s eyes bright with all the things Warren didn’t have names for. Warren has to stop himself from grabbing Nathan and pressing him close, but Nathan has no such qualms, and the moment on the dance floor comes rushing back when Nathan stops them both in their tracks and tugs Warren down, slotting their mouths together with a practiced ease, the heat between them all but searing him right down to his bones. He feels Nathan gasp into his mouth when he scrapes his teeth against Nathan’s lip in a mimic of a move he’d been shown before, and just about loses it right then and there.

It takes the combined wolf-whistling of Hayden and Trevor to get them to come to their senses, and then both boys grappling them into a foursome of a hug to get them back in motion. They somehow make it into the hallways as the conglomeration of far too much testosterone and no small amount of affection shared between them all, only to get yelled at to shut the fuck up two feet in the door. Nathan doesn’t go after whoever had yelled, only because he’s laughing too hard to speak, his hands clutching desperately at the tangle of arms that encase him.

Though Trevor’s room is technically the closest, they fall into Warren’s room when no one is able to procure a key, discarding clothing and pulling off each other’s shoes. Trevor looks up at Warren with his eyebrows gently raised in silent question from the floor when it becomes clear both Nathan and Hayden are both staying the night by the way they roll into the bed nearly as one in a botched fight to get to it first, and Warren only has to smile and nudge him with his one socked foot in response. Trevor’s shoulders relax, and Warren reminds himself to maybe treat Trevor as more of a friend in the future, because he knows now he wouldn’t have made it out of that event easily without Trevor there to watch his back. Warren drops to the floor next to him and hooks the metal chain of the bathtub plug Trevor still wore around his neck between his fingers, and then smashes his nose against the curve of Trevor’s shoulder when a pillow nails him in the back of the head and sends him careening into the poor guy.

“Whoops!” is all Nathan offers, his hands out in a pathetic excuse of an apologetic shrug, when Warren whips around to locate the culprit and finds Hayden hanging off the bed in obvious defeat. Warren flips him off, and then gets rewarded with a second pillow right to the face, which sets them all off again.

Three of them end up only in their underwear by the time the communal helping of clothing removal has ceased, spurred on by no small amount of jibes and playful taunting all around once they had regained their breath and rushed to finish getting undressed for the night, with only Nathan the victor of a shirt in addition to the boxers that were—fuck, Warren’s, okay, alright, he can handle that, sure—and they pile into the mess of what once covered Warren’s bed like the children some of them were robbed of being.

Warren falls asleep with Nathan’s head on his chest, Hayden’s on his stomach, and his head resting under Trevor’s chin, all boundaries lost, at least for that night, in the moment they all needed to share. And Warren thinks, as he drifts off under the hazy blanket of sleep, _I wouldn’t trade this for anything in the world._

And it’s a comfort that, never again, would he have to. This was his end.

This was _his._

And no one was going to take that away ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one was my favorite, at least so far, to write.
> 
> something about a bunch of guys just being caught up together was a blast to churn out, and it gave me a chance to write Trevor and Hayden a little more. that was fun.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wrote this one back in February for Valentine's Day!
> 
> (for some reason, I thought I'd already posted this one, but I must have been thinking of Tumblr. whoops!)

It starts as it usually does—with Warren waking up.

Waking up from a heavy sort of nap, specifically, that he’d taken somewhere around when the clock had ticked over into four in the morning and Nathan had left the room for a piss break that Warren knew, even with his wits slowly fading away into sleep, also meant he was going to smoke something Warren would complain about later. Warren had promptly passed out before Nathan had returned, lulled into oblivion from the comfort of the couch by the gentle whirring of Nathan’s movie projector, the snarling face of one Dracula frozen on the wall in all its glory.

He wakes up still on that couch, possibly in the same position he’d passed out in, with a blanket that belonged to either him or Nathan draped over his torso and a pillow shoved haphazardly into the space where his head might have been had he not already had it pressed deeply into the crevice of the cushions like a sorely confused ostrich in a thunderstorm by the time Nathan came to the rescue with sleep essentials.

None of that is particularly out of the norm for Warren to think much of anything about any of it, so he doesn’t as he stretches his appendages out and slowly works the feeling back into his virtually-dead arm. Not until a photo catches his eye from where it sits on the table, surrounded by an arrangement of paper roses Warren knows, thanks to some insightful mentoring from his newest therapist, Nathan had learned how to make, amongst other, slightly more distasteful things.

(You’d be surprised what kind of origami tutorials you can find on the internet. Warren fell down that rabbit hole each and every time Nathan resorted back to tearing the paper to shreds instead of folding it, bored with whatever project he’d focused on and unwilling to bother, at least in that moment, to look for a new one.)

The photo is new in both presence and existence. Warren knows it hadn’t been there before, because the table had been littered with snacks and folders when Warren had fallen asleep, and neither of those things were within eyesight now. He thinks briefly of letting it be, because he wasn’t sure what the point of it was and he wasn’t one to mess with other people’s things, but then he remembers all the times Nathan has gone through his stuff and decides, fuck it, fair is fair. You can’t put candy in front of a toddler and then expect them to live and let live.

Warren picks the photo up, and then he starts to laugh.

It’s a Polaroid photo, which immediately tells him Max was somehow involved—as she usually tended to be nowadays, much to both Warren’s and Chloe’s chagrin, thanks to a shared class she had with Nathan and a natural ease between them that came when no strife presented itself, which Warren had not foreseen in any potential future—of Warren’s action figures of the Eleventh Doctor (Christmas Adventure Set) and The Flash (JLA Series 1), tangled in some semblance of an embrace that would have done the famous V-Day Kiss photo proud.

(Well, maybe. The Flash’s hand was clearly situated somewhere around The Doctor’s plastic ass, and Warren was about eighty-five-percent sure the original photo had no such groping, but it was the thought that counted, right?)

Warren flips the photo over, and written on the back in bright, scratchy red sharpie are the words, _Nerdy enough for you to be my Valentine?_

And Warren’s throat goes completely dry in response. His stomach does a familiar plummet straight to the heels of his feet, but, for once, it’s not out of fear for a future he couldn’t control.

Nathan was not romantic. At least, not in the traditional sense, and the reasons behind that were ones Warren had, admittedly, been too afraid to traverse after learning of some of the things Nathan had gone through growing up. Warren was okay with that, because he’d yet to regain the concise ability to try at being very romantic himself, and he was sure that, by the time he even got a little of a handle back on his wooing skills, he wouldn’t even feel the need to use them on someone like Nathan, who never did things like this.

Well, you know. Until now.

Nathan was not a romantic, and Warren didn’t have the intuition to see past that. And now Warren had nothing to give Nathan in return.

Okay, yeah, Nathan probably wouldn’t actually care if Warren had nothing to give, but _Warren_ would care, and that bothered him enough that he ripped the blanket off his legs and tumbled from the warm embrace of the couch to launch bodily at his charging phone. He both nearly knocks over a haphazardly-placed camera and almost rips the charger from the wall socket once he gets there, but he barely notices as he decides the fact his phone is upside down is the more dire issue at hand. He knows of only one person so good on her feet that she was as reliable a companion as he could ask for in such a sudden and grave situation, and her number is pulled up almost without him having to think about the action.

He jams his finger against the screen and calls Chloe immediately.

“Warren?” Chloe asks instead of some other typical greeting. She sounds alarmed. Probably because Warren _never_ calls her. They have a purely text-based mobile relationship, and deviating from the norm was a label for potential disaster. He curses himself for not thinking of what his action would look like after everything that they’d been through. He knows he should know better.

“I’m the only one having a crisis,” he explains quickly, just so Chloe can relax.

She does so immediately, as is evident in her tone. “You have an oral obsession with a Prescott,” she teases, “of course you’re having a crisis.”

“It’s not just oral,” Warren grumbles, then shakes his head sharply, because that was _not_ the point of this call, dammit. “Don’t distract me! I’m having a crisis and I need you to help me find something for Valentine's Day.”

The line goes silent. Warren can’t tell if Chloe’s shocked, holding in enough laughter to potentially kill her, or some combination of the two. He knows the line didn’t go dead. He can hear the faint static hum of it still being open.

It lasts for nearly thirty seconds, and then, “Today is Valentine’s Day.”

“I know.”

“You didn’t get anything for him on Valentine’s Day? How did you not get him something, like, three months ago? You're the sap of the group. It’s basically your prerogative.”

Warren winces. “I didn’t think we were that kind of couple.”

Chloe snorts one hell of a snort. It could top charts, Warren thinks, if such a thing existed. “Not that kind of couple? The shit does that mean? What kind of couple could you actually be? You got together over a mistake in the space-time continuum. Who does that?”

“Er, probably some forms of romcom couples in movies?”

“Are you saying you’re living a romcom, Cracker?”

_No,_ Warren thinks without hesitating. No, he is not. Because there had been far too much terror and trauma involved with his journey for anyone to be laughing.

“Just help me Chloe,” Warren begs. “Please. I’ll owe you if you help me.”

Chloe hums, but it’s in that way that she does when she’s not actually considering Warren’s offer because she’s already made a decision. “Fine,” she says after barely a moment of the supposed consideration. “But if you make me late for my date, it’s your skin on the line.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

* * *

Warren sneaks off of the Blackwell campus and meets Chloe at the edge of the block, where she pulls up in her truck with a particularly smarmy smirk on her face. Warren has no idea where Max is—or Nathan himself, for that matter—but he’s not about to start questioning it when he didn’t want to run into either just yet.

“I can’t believe I’m helping Nathan Prescott’s boyfriend get him a Valentine’s Day gift,” Chloe says good-naturedly, if a little awed, as Warren clambers into the seat. Her nose scrunches up. “Actually, I can’t believe Nathan Prescott _has_ a boyfriend. What’s the world coming to?”

“Armageddon, obviously,” Warren grumbles, then smacks his hands against the dash nervously when Chloe pulls from the curb with enough gas to rival Nathan’s hasty driving tactics.

Chloe leans over and swats at his hands to make him stop. “You know what you’re getting him?”

Warren cradles his assaulted hands against his chest and looks over at her. “Was that a question or are you about to tell me what I’m getting him?”

“What makes you think I have any idea what to get a worm like Prescott for Valentine’s Day?”

A fair point, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try.

“What do you get someone who has the money to buy the entire town?”

Chloe hums thoughtfully. The familiar stores of the road past the Academy pass them by, and Warren wracks his brain with little to show for it by the time Chloe says, “Why don’t you just snap him some nudes and call it a day?”

Warren nearly chokes on his spit with how fast he inhales, and Chloe starts to cackle. “I am not taking nudes for him, Jesus Christ,” he croaks, trying his best not to blush at the idea and failing spectacularly, if Chloe’s continued mirth when she glances at him is anything to go by.

“I was only half-kidding,” Chloe says from beneath her laughter, and Warren knows it’s a lie. She wasn’t kidding at all, and she’d probably been hoping he’d agree so she could get off scot-free.

“I’m not even technically legal. I don’t know if he’d appreciate it.”

“Oh, he’d appreciate it,” Chloe muses nearly to herself as she turns sharply into a parking lot. Warren graciously ignores that comment as he watches her wrench her gear shift into park and twist in her seat until she faces him. “Are we actually about to go into this blind?”

“Do you have a better plan?”

She purses her lips, then reaches over and unbuckles his seat belt. She’s not wearing one, or Warren might return the strange favor. Then she smacks Warren on the arm like she’s about to send him off into the fray of an important sports game and then snaps the handle of her door to unlatch it. “Let’s rock and roll, bitcharoo.”

She’s out of the car before Warren can tell her he liked that line more than he thinks he should, and Warren scrambles to catch up with her long, purposeful strides as she makes her way into the Rite Aid like there was a zombie apocalypse brewing behind her and this was her last chance to get the goods before they all surrendered to the oncoming doom.

They’re met immediately with a pink and red smorgasbord of garishly decorated aisles bathed in the sterile white light all drugstores seemed to love to use, peppered sparingly with wilting bouquets, sagging balloons, and the forlorn figure of one Hayden Jones.

“Aw, shit,” Chloe has the chance to say just as Hayden lifts his head and spots them both, and then his face splits into a grin.

“Graham, Price!” he greets cheerily, immediately closing the distance between them.

“How does he know my name?” Chloe whispers, but doesn’t get any semblance of a response as Hayden throws his arms around Warren and picks him up like they hadn’t seen each other in months instead of the maybe-fifteen hours that had actually passed since their last face-to-face interaction, wherein Nathan had thrown the cap of a camera lens at Hayden to get his attention in the hallway of the dorms and missed and nearly beamed Warren instead just as he was coming out of the bathrooms. Thankfully, Nathan’s aim was either terrible or fantastic, and it had struck the wall just over Hayden’s shoulder and right next to Warren’s ear instead. That interaction had ended with Hayden laughing and punching Warren in the shoulder like some sort of teammate that had made a good play. Having taken place, again, maybe not even fifteen hours ago, Warren still had the bruise to show the interaction.

But Hayden was Hayden, and snatch Warren up he did. Warren was never sure what incited the action, because he’d never seen Hayden do it with anyone else. But, hey. At least he wasn’t beating Warren up.

Warren, pretty much used to this kind of thing from Hayden at this point, just holds on until Hayden lets him go again. He keeps his hands on Warren’s shoulders even as he pulls away, looking at Chloe with interest. “What are you two doing here? Where’s Max?”

“How come you call Max by her first name?” Chloe then asks, but is quickly followed by Warren waving his hands in the air and saying, “We’re just here for Valentine’s stuff. Why are you here?”

“Same thing! Thought maybe the candy would be on sale, and it’s good shit to stock up on for parties.”

“Oh,” Warren says, surprised, because that actually was a decent idea. “Cool, okay. Which way to the aisle?”

Warren starts to crane his neck, but Hayden’s face falls. “You’re standing in it.”

“Well, fuck,” says Chloe helpfully as the startlingly bare shelves become the elephant in the room. “There’s nothing here.”

“We’re a little late,” Hayden agrees.

“Little late? This place looks like Walmart after Black Friday.”

Warren pries Hayden’s distracted hands off, then stalks down the short aisle as Hayden and Chloe converse about the relative emptiness of the area and what other places might be like if the Rite Aid was as ransacked as it ended up being. Aside from a few sad bags of chocolate slumped against the far niches of the shelves, there was absolutely, and annoyingly, jack shit all left.

Great.

“What am I going to do?” Warren moans, threading his fingers into his hair and yanking dramatically. “Why didn’t I think we were this kind of couple?”

“What kind of couple?” Warren hears Hayden whisper-ask Chloe. Before she can answer, if she was even going to, he tacks on, “Oh, this is for Nate?”

“You got another boyfriend you didn’t tell me about, Cracker?” Chloe calls, just to be a dick, and Warren whips around and glares at her. To his credit, Hayden gives him a sheepish smile, knowing full well that one was his fault.

“I’m so _screwed,”_ Warren continues, slumping his way back up the aisle and past Chloe and Hayden, who follow like drones directly behind him. The bell rings as they exit, and that’s when Warren offhandedly realizes no one had been at the register while they’d been in there. It must have been a blood bath, whatever had happened to make the shelves that way.

“Uh, no, you’re not, because that would be a good outcome,” corrects Chloe, smacking Warren on the back. Warren tries not to be upset about all the physical affection he was the receiver of nowadays. “The whole point of the holiday is to get fucked, duh.”

Warren shakes his head violently, only stumbling a little when the action grants him unsteady footing.

“You are not helping, Chloe,” he warns her as Hayden’s hand is suddenly on his arm and steadying him to keep him from falling. Chloe only returns the statement with her patented shit-eating grin to show she’s fully aware of the fact.

“You were going to get him something themed for the holiday?” Hayden asks when they reach Chloe’s truck, eyeing the thing up like he’s not sure what to do about it. Warren nods solemnly. Hayden waits a beat, and then asks, “Why?”

And Warren just blinks at him. Because, yeah, wait a minute. Why was he getting Nathan Prescott something Valentine’s Day-themed on Valentine’s Day? He wasn’t some love-struck teenage kid praying their boyfriend would drop them a special candy gram (no pun intended) while they were in class or anything, he was _Nathan_ fucking _Prescott_. Pink candy and hearts and falsified niceties were basically his antithesis, and that was pretty much proven with what _Nathan_ gave _Warren_. There was hardly anything romantic about the simple gift—it had literally been nothing but something Nathan had _known_ Warren would love. Why the hell wasn’t Warren doing the same?

Jesus, and _who_ here was Nathan’s boyfriend again? Because, right now, it’s kind of looking like Hayden.

“Hayden, I could kiss you,” Warren tells him in awe.

“Oh, uh,” Hayden stutters, apparently caught off-guard by the declaration, as Warren scrambles back into the truck.

If he was going to say anything more, it’s cut off by Chloe frowning at Warren and blurting, “Are we bringing the lug?”

Blunt to a fault, that Chloe. It was almost an art form.

Hayden’s face immediately scrunches up.

“You wanna join us, Hayden?” Warren asks, just to make the look go away, because Hayden was a nice guy, and Warren found himself strangely uncomfortable with Chloe being her usual barbed self with him.

Hesitating, Hayden looks from Warren, to Chloe, to the truck, and then back at Warren again. He shrugs, “Sure, yeah. Got nothing else to do.”

“Get that ass in gear, then, boy,” Chloe says, ushering Hayden in through the driver’s side before jumping in herself, and back onto the road they go.

* * *

If Hayden was supposed to help at all past what he’d initially helped with, though, that doesn’t happen. He only sits between Chloe and Warren as Warren lobs ideas at the both of them and Chloe comes up with various reasons as to why each idea is lame, laughing occasionally and being a general dead-weight between them. Warren hadn’t exactly expected _much_ more from him, sure, but he would be lying if he said the sudden radio silence wasn’t a little unsettling.

Thankfully, Hayden perks up once they reach their destinations, even if he still doesn’t offer much by ways of help. He instead meanders around the different, useless shops, offering commentary on things Nathan would definitely _not_ like, and he and Chloe make a game of deciding what Nathan would hate the most.

“Definitely these,” Hayden says in one drugstore on the outskirts of the town, a last-minute-ditch attempt that proves just as useless as the first two, as he holds up a pair of rainbow socks for Chloe to bear witness to. Chloe laughs maniacally and pulls something distinctly X-rated off another shelf to present to Hayden, and they both cackle and banter and generally make Warren’s search harder by attracting attention he didn’t want. He has to wave off store clerks hoping to hurry along or kick them out too many times to count.

They go to three different stores, all full of things that were so far from what Nathan Prescott stood for that, by the time they’re almost back to the academy, Warren’s two steps from throwing himself out of the truck just to both distract him from the task at hand and to be a little dramatic, because that’s just what he was feeling right then.

“Forty-five minutes more and then I’m dropping your asses,” Chloe warns as they pull into what is apparently their final stop before they lose their quick transportation and will be stuck with everyone’s least favorite method of movement: Warren’s poor excuse for a car. “I have places to be and acting as Cupid’s chauffeur is not my day job.”

It’s a relatively small store they’ve arrived at as their last-ditch effort before Chloe called it quits, somewhere past where the gas station and the diner sat, that mostly sold things for tourists to enjoy after visiting the bay for what was usually either whales or something regarding Blackwell. Warren had less of a clue how the hell he was going to find something here than anywhere else, but they were running out of places to go, and there was enough of a mishmash of things housed within that Warren hoped, maybe, something would come to light.

It’s so small that, the moment they step into it, Warren realizes yet again that he recognizes another set of patrons, and that Arcadia Bay was too damn small for its own good.

“Trevor? Dana?” Warren half-greets in surprise when the two figures look up from where they’re paying at the register.

“Graham?” Trevor greets back in the same moment Dana lights up and says, “Warren!”

“And Chloe,” Chloe mumbles from next to Warren, and Warren catches Hayden cocking his head at her in confusion.

“What are you guys doing here?” Warren asks, ignoring them both.

“We’re on a date,” Dana says, smacking her open palm against the curve of Trevor’s shoulder.

Trevor gives his Trevor smile. Which is to say, a smile that is a little crooked, very warm, and mostly directed at Dana herself, regardless of who he was actually talking to. He holds up the bag he’d just purchased. “They’ve got old vinyls and other things here, sometimes we get one and chill out with it.”

“Like a retro section?” Hayden asks, throwing Warren a look, but Warren’s already caught on. Old movies were basically his and Nathan’s thing.

Dana, too, seems to catch on immediately, even though there’s no possible way she could have had any previous information regarding Warren’s problem beforehand. She walks over, reaches out, and curls her arm into Warren’s. “Over this way,” she tells him as she guides him through the store to a small nook in the back. Set just in front of them is a single, long table covered in crates with vinyls stacked inside, and along the walls are shelves of box sets of varying degrees of media, from anime to sitcoms to shows Warren’s somehow never heard of. It reminds Warren of the FYE in the big mall way farther inland than Warren usually ever had time to bother with.

Warren can swear angels start singing in his ears the moment his eyes land on the glorious display, and they sound suspiciously like Dana herself.

Oh, wait. No. Dana’s just talking to him. Warren tunes back in.

“Might I suggest something over here?” she tells him as if she’s selling him something extremely expensive and obnoxiously sparkly, pulling her arm away to gesture at a small specific section with a flourish. It’s a part of the display that’s sectioned-off by a string of paper hearts, and it holds within a variety of box sets, all with an obvious romantic theme to them. Dana’s got a twinkle in her eye as she picks up, specifically, a black and white box that says _Worst Romantic Movies of the Ages_ in looping white script.

It’s so perfect, Warren is stunned where he stands by the mere idea of its existence. He has to take a moment to reboot, and Dana snorts a laugh while the other party members, who had been left to their own devices, trickle onto the scene.

“That’s the bitch,” Chloe says immediately, grinning and snapping the fingers of both her hands into a finger gun, and Warren blinks as if coming out of a trance.

He lunges at Dana, bypassing the box set completely, and wraps her up in a hug. She laughs and hugs him back, and not even a beat later another set of arms are around him, and then another, and Warren can feel the corner of the box set digging painfully into the small of his back as he becomes enveloped in an entity of friends.

“I ain’t hugging you guys,” Chloe says, and Warren starts to laugh a laugh that almost edges on crying from how surprisingly relieved he is over something he knows doesn’t actually matter.

No—didn’t matter to _Nathan_. Nathan wouldn’t have cared, that much Warren knows. But it mattered to Warren, getting something for Nathan in return for staying with him all the times he thought he was losing his mind even after it all had been done, and he realizes, as everyone peels away and looks over the box set like it was worth infinitely more than the price tag stated, that he should have known better instead of waiting until it was almost too late.

“I can’t believe you found this,” Hayden offers as Warren gathers himself. He rolls the set between his hands, peering at it with an excited look on his face. “I didn’t even think of something like this. It’s great.”

Warren nods his head, maybe a little too enthusiastically, then turns to Dana, where she’s standing with an arm around Trevor, watching. “Thanks, Dana, holy shit,” he tells her earnestly.

She and Trevor both beam. “Anytime, Warren,” she says, and Trevor punctuates her statement with a nod and a wink.

“Might not be the most romantic thing ever,” Hayden says, clapping a hand on Warren’s shoulder proudly, “but Nathan will love it.”

Chloe reaches out, peels one of the paper hearts off the display, and slaps it on the box set. “There. Romantic as fuck. Now let’s ditch this joint before I miss _my_ Valentine’s Day shindig.”

* * *

Finding Nathan turns out to be a relatively easy ordeal. He’s in Warren’s room when Warren checks, sitting at his desk and going over a file spilling photos all along its surface, a few rejected options tossed away to sit haphazardly on Warren’s bed.

He looks up when Warren enters and only has a moment to look relatively unperturbed before his eyes narrow into suspicion when Warren’s hand immediately darts behind his back.

“Where have you been all day?” Nathan asks him slowly, highly suspicious, after he’s taken a moment to just stare at Warren and wait to see if it alone would make Warren cave.

Warren hesitates, debating between outright telling Nathan the whole story and instead just giving him the gift, then decides the latter was the safer route when it came to Nathan and his impatience for Warren’s word-vomit and withdraws his hand until it was fully extended, the box set hanging in the air between him and Nathan.

Nathan stares a moment—surprise crossing his face so briefly that, had Warren not already been looking right at him, he would have missed it—and then he stands up and closes the distance, his eyes never leaving the gift.

He doesn’t take it right away—only stares at it, like he wasn’t sure it wouldn’t lunge at him and bite if he put his hands on it. It takes Warren shaking it gently, once, for Nathan to finally accept it with both his hands.

Nathan scrutinizes the box set carefully, turning it slowly in his grip. He’s not frowning, so that’s a good sign, but he looks like he’s not processing what he has in his hands. He confirms the speculation a moment later when he looks up at Warren and says, “What’s this for?”

Warren just blinks. “Uh. Valentine’s Day?”

Nathan’s face screws up like Warren just told him the equation of string theory. Warren can’t help it—he wilts a little, and his fingers spring to twist his sleeve up between them like they always did when he wasn’t comfortable with whatever was happening either to or around him.

“You—” he starts, then falters. Nathan doesn’t say anything, so he tries again, “You wanted to be my Valentine?”

Was he wrong? Had the photo _not_ been for Warren or something? It seemed improbable, given the fact Warren was not only _pretty fucking sure_ they were technically dating now, but also that the fact that it was a picture of The Flash and The Eleventh Doctor didn’t really leave a lot of room for outside speculation of who the figures were supposed to represent. So, you know, who the fuck else could it have been for if not Warren?

Warren is so lost in his own near-spiral that he almost completely misses the slow smile that springs to life on Nathan’s face as he eyes Warren, growing from first a small twitch of the lips until it hung on his face, full and crooked as the kind of grin only Nathan Prescott could really pull off.

“You’re an idiot, Graham,” he tells Warren softly, and then he reaches out and wraps his hand around the back of Warren’s neck to pull him down and in. Warren relaxes immediately, and his hands release their hold on his sleeve to press against Nathan’s face.

_Hell yeah,_ Warren thinks to himself as he leans into the kiss, the box set thumping softly on the carpet next to him as Nathan’s hands find their way under Warren’s shirt and Warren’s fingers thread into Nathan’s belt loops in turn.

_Nailed it._


End file.
